Rehearsals are underway for a performance in February of Purcell’s ground-breaking Dido and Aeneas by the University Cecilian Choir, String Sinfonia and soloists.

Driven by characterful choruses, the Chorus has a significant role to play throughout each of the acts. Whether courtiers to the Queen, a coven of witches or lusty and infidelious sailors, the Choir will have a major part to play in the gradual unfolding of the witches’ nefarious scheming to come between the Queen of Carthage and the Trojan prince…

The Choir has been working hard in rehearsals each week, and is here captured getting into character as palace courtiers for the start of Act I.

Soloists in the opera are drawn from the Choir, including third-year Music Scholar, Fleur Sumption and first-year Felicity Bourdillon, seen here in an earlier rehearsal for Acts I and II.

Banish sorrow, banish care…