St Martin-in-the-Fields
Choral Evensong

Live from St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, with members of the BBC Singers.

Introit: My Eyes for beauty pine (Elizabeth Coxhead/Thomas Coxhead)
Responses: Byrd
Psalms 65, 66, 67 (Wills, Maxim, Grindle)
First Lesson: Isaiah 49 vv.1-7
Canticles: Stanford in B flat
Second Lesson: 1 John 1 vv.1-10
Anthem: Behold, O God our defender (John Scott) – to mark the fifth anniversary of the composer’s death
Prayer anthem: God be in my head (David Hill)
Voluntary: Triptych (Errollyn Wallen)

Nicholas Chalmers (Conductor)
Rachel Mahon (Organist)

The story of Dido and Aeneas didn’t end with Dido’s death. Errollyn Wallen takes the story forward, interweaving a full performance of Purcell’s great tragedy with her imaginative new partner-piece.

‘Remember me, but ah! Forget my fate' sings Dido at the end of Purcell’s opera. But life isn’t quite as easy as that, and some memories have a destiny of their own. Set several years after the Carthaginian queen’s death, Dido’s Ghost finds Dido’s sister Anna abandoned on the shores of Aeneas’s new kingdom, igniting a murderous jealously in Aeneas’s wife Lavinia – and as events play out, its characters confront a past that refuses to fade.

Errollyn Wallen’s new opera, based on a tale by Roman poet Ovid, embraces and complements Purcell’s original, which is performed in its entirety as the centrepiece of a drama that is both old and new. Performed by the period instruments of the Dunedin Consort, past blurs into present and memory becomes emotion in this ambitious and poignant new commission.