ETO: Pre Performance Talk: Ariadne/Dido & Aeneas

This pre-performance talk, offered by English Touring Opera ahead of that evening's double bill, is a chance to get under the skin of two very different works united by a shared theme. The double bill pairs Elena Langer's Ariadne, a 20-minute setting of Glyn Maxwell's poem for soprano and a small on-stage quartet, with Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, a baroque masterpiece of theatricality and despair. Both operas centre on women who sacrifice everything for the man they love, only to be abandoned at their most vulnerable. Soprano Jessica Cale takes the title role in Ariadne, while mezzo-soprano Samantha Price sings Dido and baritone Michael Lafferty makes his ETO debut as Aeneas.