MULTIMEDIA-ENGLISH
Dido's lament from Dido and Aeneas (Anne Sophie von Otter)
click image to open video page
4:24
Video page URL
https://multimedia-english.com/videos/esl/didos-lament-from-dido-and-aeneas-anne-sophie-von-otter-3935
Description

Something different...may not be suitable for all audiences... you need a lot of sensibility...


You can enjoy "Dido's Lament" while watching the powerful images by Käte Kollwitz.

Transcript

Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me,
On thy bosom let me rest,
More I would, but Death invades me;
Death is now a welcome guest.

When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

Meaning

"Dido's Lament" is the commonly-used name for the noted aria, "When I am laid in earth", from the opera "Dido and Aeneas", by Henry Purcell (libreto by Nahum Tate). Considered the greatest operatic achievement of 17th century England and the first great English opera.


The story of Dido and Aeneas is one of the world’s most tragic love stories, first described in Virgil’s Aeneid, then Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage and Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate’s opera Dido and Aeneas. Dido, also called Elissa, was Princess of Tyre in Phoenicia. Escaping tyranny in her country, she came to Libya where she founded Carthage, a great city which Aeneas and his comrades, who had become refugees after the sack of Troy, visited seven years after the end of the Trojan War. As Queen of Carthage, she received the Trojans exiles with hospitality, and having given Aeneas more love than he could take, felt betrayed when he left for Italy, and committed suicide atop of a funeral pyre.


Käthe Kollwitz is undoubtedly one of the most important women of the modern age. Her art developed completely autonomously and shows all signs of genius. Käthe believed that art should reflect the social conditions of the time and her work serves as an indictment of the social conditions in Germany during the late 19th and early 20th century. She produced a series of works reflecting her concern with the themes of war, poverty, death, hunger, working class life and the lives of ordinary women.


She said: "I have never worked coldly ... but rather, in a certain sense, with my own blood. Those who see my art must feel that."