A major publishing event in British music, the Purcell Society’s new edition of Dido and Aeneas radically reappraises an undisputed national treasure. Based on sources distanced in time from its first performance, previous editions relied heavily on the famed but imperfect Tenbury manuscript, while assuming on not much evidence that the opera was written for the pupils of Josias Priest’s Chelsea boarding school for girls.

The fruit of four decades of evolving Purcellian studies, this new sco...