Both Purcell’s and Virgil’s versions of Dido and Aeneas feature an Aeneas who is a man of action. He is what he does, in contrast to Dido, who is what she feels. Aeneas and Dido tries to imagine Aeneas’s interior life. What drives Aeneas to choose an uncertain quest for a new homeland over Dido’s offer of love and country? His heart has been turned to ashes by witnessing the violence visited upon his Troy. Dido’s heart still aches from her husband’s death, yet she plucks up the courage to confess her love to Aeneas, making his rejection unbearably painful. Immersed as they are in their own suffering, they cannot grasp each other’s.

- from JamesRolfe.ca