What does Purcell's victory in Radio 3's Nation's Favourite Aria competition prove? When I am Laid in Earth (more famously known as Dido's Lament, from Dido and Aeneas) topped an 11-strong shortlist, a surprise winner from a quixotic operatic collation assembled from listeners' earlier votes, that didn't even include Puccini's Nessun Dorma or the last scene of Götterdämmerung. Is it that Radio 3's listeners formed an anti-Italian and German opera cartel, mounting a concerted effort to show that Britons have always ruled the operatic airwaves, ever since the composition of Dido, England's first opera? Or is it that Purcell outdid all of his successors by writing the best "aria" at the end of the 17th century, a model that no later composer could ever match?
Of course it's not. Dido's Lament isn't even an aria (well, it only became one retrospectively, when Italian nomenclature took over musico-operatic terminology), and, when Purcell composed it, opera in England was an art form in transition. He would have been as surprised as anyone by his victory. The scale of his win, though, raises some questions. With 22.6%, the Purcell almost doubled the share of the vote of its nearest rival, Mozart's Dove sono from The Marriage of Figaro. Radio 3 wouldn't tell me how many actual votes were cast – why the figure should be a state secret is beyond me - which can only lead me to the view that as many people voted for the Purcell as the number who are members of the Purcell Society … Joke, of course. The point is this: I love Dido's Lament too, but Purcell just isn't twice as good an opera, or even aria, composer as Mozart. Rather the other way round, if I had to put them in order.
