From ruined Troy, Prince Aeneas was sailing to Italy, there to found the second Troy the world would know as Rome. En route, he stopped at Carthage, the proud metropolis built by Queen Dido, another royal fugitive. His voyage might have ended there, for he and Dido fell in love. But the gods ordained otherwise. The grief-stricken Dido committed suicide, leaving a legacy of enmity that ended only with the fall of Carthage at the conclusion of the Punic Wars. Commemorating Dido’s story, the Brentano Quartet and the beloved soprano Dawn Upshaw devote the first half of their program to early English music, culminating with the queen’s time-stopping lament “When I am laid in earth” from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas—which in turn serves as prelude to Melinda Wagner’s new monodrama Dido Reimagined, set to text by Stephanie Fleischmann illuminating her vulnerability and her strength. —Matthew Gurewitsch