Had Purcell and his anonymous librettist been working in the twenty first century, they would have been had up by the Advertising Standards Authority. There is little or no resemblance between Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and this semi-staged opera. In the late sixties the Purcell Society published a comparison between the Shakespeare and the Purcell; one wonders why! And in Philip Pickett’s wonderful new version, even those semblances have been lost.
Pickett’s reworking of the text start with a group of travellers gathering, as if we were are the beginning of the Canterbury Tales or the Decameron. The characters ran down the aisles of the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, with their very expensive luggage and gathered on stage as if expecting the Eurostar. At one point they all jostle and peer out at the imaginary platform. So our contemporary expectations are immediately severed from the masque tradition from which this opera was originally built.
Pickett has conflated the bit parts of the original into a range of contemporary archetypes: The Career Woman, the Femme Fatale, The Shop Girl, the Whiskey Priest, The soft-hearted Biker. And the programme notes provided a back story for each. Such devices work – up to a point. They provide a focal point for the dress, attitudes and performances for each of the singers involved. They provide a surface coherence which holds this lovely evening together. But they don’t provide coherence to the plot; the inconsequentiality of which drove some patrons away at half time!!
And that was a great pity. Purcell’s score and songs are some of his finest writing. The aria ‘O let me weep, for ever weep’, here sung by The Career Girl is quite as beautiful and quite as moving as the more famous Dido’s Lament. Here it was sung exquisitely by Joanne Lunn. Earlier the Chorus’s ‘I press her Hand gently, look Languishing down’ is just as fine. Purcell’s writing for orchestra is just as beautiful and The New London Consort’s playing, one-to-a-part, was luminously precise and yet warm. All the singers were excellent, particularly, but not only, Michael George as the Whiskey Priest and Simon Grant as The Bank Clerk. In addition, we had tumblers and jugglers.
This is a touring production; if it’s on near you rush to see it; it’s wonderful, atmospheric and delightful. Only don’t expect much plot!!
Ian Pople