The son of a court musician, Henry Purcell was born in London in 1659. He flourished in the English Restoration under Charles II, after Cromwell's Puritan rule was turned back. He wrote a wide variety of pieces, instrumental, ensemble, orchestral, and vocal, but can always be remembered through Dido and Aeneas as the composer of the first English opera. He died in 1695, probably of pneumonia.