Editing Dido and Aeneas (section)

===Premiere and early revivals===
A letter from the Levant merchant Rowland Sherman associates ''Dido and Aeneas'' with [[Josias Priest]]'s girls' school in [[Chelsea, London]] no later than the summer of 1688.{{sfn|White|2009|p=420}} The first performance may have taken place as early as 1 December 1687,{{sfn|White|2009|p=422}} and evidence suggests that the opera was performed at the school again in 1689.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Several scholars have argued that the work was composed for the English court, either for Charles II (and perhaps as early as 1684)<ref name="Pinnock, Andrew 2015"/><ref name=WoodPinnock /> or for [[James II of England|James II]].<ref>Keates (1996) p. 179 and {{harvnb|Walking|1995|p=469}}{{clarify|date=August 2024|reason=Page 469 is outside the cited range.}}</ref> Following the Chelsea performances, the opera was not staged again in Purcell's lifetime. Its next performance was in 1700 as a ''[[masque]]'' incorporated into ''Beauty the Best Advocate'', an adapted version of Shakespeare's ''[[Measure for Measure]]'' at [[Thomas Betterton]]'s theatre in London.

After 1705 it disappeared as a staged work, with only sporadic concert performances, until 1895 when the first staged version in modern times was performed by students of the [[Royal College of Music]] at London's [[Lyceum Theatre, London|Lyceum Theatre]] to mark the bicentenary of Purcell's death.<ref>Crozier (1987) p. 114</ref> ''Dido and Aeneas'' received its first performance outside England on 14 December 1895 in a concert version at the University Society in [[Dublin]].