Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell was the leading English composer of the late seventeenth century, a chorister and later organist of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey who wrote for church, court and stage alike. His theatre music, including the semi-operas King Arthur and The Fairy-Queen, mixed spoken drama with extended musical scenes in a specifically English compromise with opera; Dido and Aeneas, thought to have been written for a girls' school in Chelsea, is his only fully sung work and the first great English opera. He died young, at the height of his career, and was buried beside the Abbey's organ.