UK Edition
Review
Iestyn Davies is an absolute treat in this radical Fairy Queen – review
Purcell’s The Fairy Queen belongs to an episode in musical history known as ‘semi-opera’, sitting somewhere between the courtly masque, the baroque conventions familiar from Handel’s work and the later tradition of opera-comique with its passages of spoken dialogue.
It contains five groups of musical numbers, conceived to be delivered as interludes between the acts of a bastardised spoken version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – though they bear almost no relation to the play’s plot or characters. The score is so rich in invention and melody that it stands happily alone, but its overall rhythm is enhanced if some attempt is made to restore this original context, even if the result is a long evening (at Glyndebourne, the performance lasted over three hours).
The enterprising Academy of Ancient Music has embarked on a more radical experiment, devised by Daisy Evans, who runs the modish fringe outfit Silent Opera. For this concert staging, she transforms the platform into the scene of a rehearsal for a malfunctioning broadcast or performance along the lines of The Play that Goes Wrong.
Amid costume wagons, safety warning cones and arc lights, the singers aren’t sure what they’re meant to be doing. Tempers run high and improvising fast is the only solution. In place of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Timothy West reads extracts from Shakespeare and others, but he stumbles over his lines. The whole thing teeters on chaos.
The audience generally seemed to enjoy this farce, enacted by all concerned with great gusto, but I found the faffing around irritating and pointless. What on earth did it have to do with Purcell, or the theatre of his day, or indeed anything implicit in the music or text? It didn’t add atmosphere, it didn’t illuminate meaning, it simply milked a few cheap laughs. A director showing off, in other words.
More’s the pity though, as the orchestra under Richard Egarr played with light-fingered and fleet-footed energy and the small chorus was an unfailing delight. The soloists were excellent too, with outstanding contributions from newcomers Gwilym Bowen and Rowan Pierce – the latter’s ‘O let me weep’ showed impressive poise and tonal purity.
The star attraction was our great counter-tenor Iestyn Davies. He didn’t have much to sing, but he played his part as the floor manager with good grace and made his warmly seductive rendering of ‘One charming night’ an absolute treat.