Presto Recording of the Week
29th August 2025

Joyce DiDonato (Dido), Michael Spyres (Aeneas), Fatma Said (Belinda), Beth Taylor (Sorceress), Hugh Cutting (Spirit), Laurence Kilsby (Sailor), Alena Dantcheva and Anna Piroli (Witches)

Il Pomo d'Oro, Maxim Emelyanychev

The acclaimed mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato stars as Dido in this recording of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, captured at Essen Philharmonie as part of a celebrated European tour in 2024. The album includes Joyce’s rendition of Dido’s famous lament “When I am laid in earth” – a staple of her repertoire, though she only performed the opera in its entirety for the first time last year. With Il Pomo d’Oro and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, the cast also features Michael Spyres as Aeneas, Fatma Said as Dido’s companion Belinda, and Hugh Cutting as the Spirit, alongside Beth Taylor, Carlotta Colombo, Laurence Kilsby, Alena Dantcheva and Anna Piroli.

"This new recording has a star in Joyce DiDonato and, for all that the performance as a whole is of high standard, she dominates the proceedings wherever she appears...Il Pomo d’Oro and its choir are a top-flight Baroque ensemble and Emelyanychev is alive to every quick-changing mood in Purcell’s brilliant, humorous, tragic masterpiece." - Financial Times, 22nd August 2025