Opera as Process: The Mutable Meaning of Dido and Aeneas

Opera as Process: The Mutable Meaning of Dido and Aeneas redefines how we understand Purcell and Tate's iconic opera. Rather than viewing it as a static Baroque text, Edna Holywell presents Dido and Aeneas as a living cultural process shaped by shifting historical, political and aesthetic contexts.Through detailed analyses of staging practices, musical sources and reception histories, Holywell examines the opera's enduring topoi - eros, telos and thanatos - and the tropoi through which they are reimagined. Drawing on semiotics, literary criticism and performance studies, the book challenges structuralist approaches and proposes an intertextual, historically sensitive framework for understanding how operatic meaning evolves.Rich in interdisciplinary insight, Opera as Process will be essential reading for scholars of musicology, theatre, literature and philosophy, as well as anyone interested in the mutable life of opera across time.