by Blue Gene TyrannyAn English composer in every category and form of music practiced in his time, remembered today for lively trumpet voluntaries and sweet vocal airs. Dido and Aeneas has plenty of both. Writing it on commission for the head of a boarding school for "gentlewomen" in Chelsea, Purcell included 17 different dances for the girls amidst the lovely arias of the mythological libretto, a type of "masque" -- important in the development of opera and a curiously interesting form of theater today.\r