Analysis
The opening recitative secco, "Thy hand, Belinda", is accompanied by continuo only. Word painting is applied on the text "darkness" and "death" which is presented with chromaticism, symbolic of death.
"Dido's Lament" opens with a descending chromatic line, the ground bass, which is repeated eleven times throughout the aria, thus structuring the piece in the form of a ciaccona. The meter is 3/2 in the key of G minor. Henry 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."
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