“Remember me!”
“When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create
No trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate”
Great artistry can bridge time. Over 300 years can fall away, and a great operatic aria can be reimagined. The death scene of Dido brought to startling life, not sung in the voice of a young woman, for whom the lament was originally written, but by a man, a rock musician without formal classical training…
Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) was one of the greatest English composers of the Baroque era. The final aria of his opera ‘Dido and Aeneas’, ‘When I Am Laid in Earth’ (popularly known as ‘Dido’s Lament’), is perhaps his crowning glory – such emotional depth in so few words.
In 1995, at the Meltdown Festival at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, the American singer Jeff Buckley steps out onto the stage. Without rehearsal, reportedly jet lagged and exhausted, he somehow conjured this mesmerising performance.
Both Purcell and Buckley died tragically young, at 36 and 30 respectively. Mystery shadows both of these deaths, particularly Buckley’s, who drowned in the Mississippi. For me, it is impossible not to remember his fate, while listening to this ethereal recording, somehow made even more haunting as it was only captured via concert bootlegs. The tragic foreshadowing of Buckley’s early death, and the fragile nature of this surviving copy, somehow gives the song even more weight.
Purcell was famous for being able to use the English language naturally. How he would have approved of Buckley’s version.
A once in a generation singer, never to be forgotten.
