Dido and Aeneas - by Graupner

Last season, the Matinee presented Graupner as a composer of church cantatas - he wrote over 1,400 of them. But he also composed eight operas, the first and most successful of which was Dido in 1707.

Dido's tragic end
As earlier with Cavalli and Purcell, and later Berlioz, with Christoph Graupner the story is based on the unhappy love between the Trojan hero Aeneas and Queen Dido, who rules Carthage. The tragic ending, with Dido's suicide, was actually unusual. All of her arias are not coincidentally in a minor key. Graupner's version is a German-language opera, but laced with sixteen virtuosic Italian arias, duets and ensembles, something not unusual in his time.

Dutch premiere with Andrea Marcon
The composer was hired as a harpsichordist at the Theater am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg in 1705, and he immediately learned about the city's thriving opera culture, the theater world that Keiser and Handel led. This Dutch premiere is conducted by conductor Andrea Marcon, not surprisingly a regular guest at the Matinee.