The text, and Purcell's opera, is based to the Aeneid, the Roman legend of the Trojan warrior Aeneas, travelling to Italy from the fallen Troy in order to settle there and secure his son Ascanius's lineage. Their ship is blown off course from Sicily, and they land on the shore of North Africa, in Carthage, a town newly settled by refugees from Tyre. Aeneas falls in love with their queen, Dido, but dutifully departs for Italy, leaving her. Distraught at his betrayal, she orders a pyre to be built and set ablaze so that Aeneas will see from his ship that she has killed herself. She sings the lament before stabbing herself as Aeneas sails on.
The opening secco recitative, "Thy hand, Belinda", is accompanied by continuo only. Word painting is applied on the text "darkness" and "death" which is presented with chromaticism, symbolising death and descent into the grave.[2][3]
The ground bass opening "Dido's Lament" forms a chromatic stepwise descent over the interval of a perfect fourth, the chromatic fourth,
which is repeated eleven times throughout the aria, thus structuring the piece in the form of a passacaglia. The meter is 3
2 in the key of G minor.
Purcell has applied word painting on the words "laid", which is also given a descending chromatic line portraying death and agony,
and "remember me", which is presented in a syllabic text setting and repeated
with its last presentation leaping in register with a sudden crescendo
displaying her desperate cry with urgency as she prepares for her fate: death. In one interpretation, Dido's relationship with Aeneas is portrayed in this moment as an "apocalyptic romance".[2]
