Had Purcell and his anonymous librettist been working in the twenty first century, they would have been had up by the Advertising Standards Authority.\u00a0 There is little or no resemblance between Shakespeare\u2019s A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream\u00a0 and this semi-staged opera.\u00a0 In the late sixties the Purcell Society published a comparison between the Shakespeare and the Purcell;\u00a0 one wonders why! And in Philip Pickett\u2019s wonderful new version, even those semblances have been lost.<\/p>\n
Pickett\u2019s reworking of the text start with a group of travellers gathering, as if we were are the beginning of the Canterbury Tales\u00a0 or the Decameron.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 At one point they all jostle and peer out at the imaginary platform.\u00a0 So our contemporary expectations are immediately severed from the masque tradition from which this opera was originally built.<\/p>\n
Pickett has conflated the bit parts of the original into a range of contemporary archetypes:\u00a0 The Career Woman, the Femme Fatale, The Shop Girl, the Whiskey Priest, The soft-hearted Biker.\u00a0 And the programme notes provided a back story for each.\u00a0 Such devices work – up to a point.\u00a0 They provide a focal point for the dress, attitudes and performances for each of the singers involved.\u00a0 They provide a surface coherence which holds this lovely evening together.\u00a0 But they don\u2019t provide coherence to the plot;\u00a0 the inconsequentiality of which drove some patrons away at half time!!<\/p>\n
And that was a great pity.\u00a0 Purcell\u2019s score and songs are some of his finest writing.\u00a0 The aria \u2018O let me weep, for ever weep\u2019, here sung by The Career Girl is quite as beautiful and quite as moving as the more famous Dido\u2019s Lament.\u00a0 Here it was sung exquisitely by Joanne Lunn.\u00a0 Earlier the Chorus\u2019s \u2018I press her Hand gently, look Languishing down\u2019 is just as fine.\u00a0 Purcell\u2019s writing for orchestra is just as beautiful and The New London Consort’s playing, one-to-a-part, was luminously precise and yet warm.\u00a0 All the singers were excellent, particularly, but not only, Michael George as the Whiskey Priest and Simon Grant as The Bank Clerk.\u00a0 In addition, we had tumblers and jugglers.<\/p>\n
This is a touring production;\u00a0 if it\u2019s on near you rush to see it; it\u2019s wonderful, atmospheric and delightful.\u00a0\u00a0 Only don\u2019t expect much plot!!<\/p>\n
Ian Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Had Purcell and his anonymous librettist been working in the twenty first century, they would have been had up by the Advertising Standards Authority.\u00a0 There is little or no resemblance between Shakespeare\u2019s A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream\u00a0 and this semi-staged opera.\u00a0 In the late sixties the Purcell Society published a comparison between the Shakespeare and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[15,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n