United States Tanglewood Festival 2024 [5] – Purcell, The Fairy Queen: Soloists, Les Arts Florissants / William Christie (music director). Seiji Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood, 18.7.2024. (CSa)
Soloists:
Paulina Francisco (soprano)
Georgia Burashko (mezzo soprano)
Rebecca Leggett (mezzo-soprano)
Juliette Mey (mezzo-soprano)
Ilja Aksionov (tenor)
Rodrigo Carreto (tenor)
Hugo Herman-Wilson (baritone)
Benjamin Schilperoort (bass-baritone)
Dancers from Compagnie Käfig and the Julliard School: Baptiste Coppin, Ian Debono, Samuel Florimond, Anahi Passi, Alary-Youra Ravin and Timothée Zig
Stage director and Choreographer – Mourad Merzouki
William Christie was once hailed in an interview in The Spectator as ‘The Sun God of Early Music’. A distinguished musicologist, harpsichordist and conductor, he and Les Arts Florissants – the period instrument ensemble he founded ‘in the name of creativity, pleasure and sharing’- have been described as pioneers in the revival of Baroque music, particularly the rediscovery of operas long forgotten. Christie has led the field in bringing rarely performed works by the likes of Monteverdi, Lully, Charpentier and Handel to wider audiences. He has been exceptionally effective in overcoming the inherent challenges of mounting historically informed productions. Successful productions depend on three main components: words, music and staging. Words and music have for the most part come down the centuries intact. Christie, a stickler for expressive and accurate enunciation and insistent on perfect phrasing, dynamics and balance, breathes new life and great beauty into fossilised seventeenth and eighteenth century scores. More challenging production problems relate to staging, movement and dance. Surviving information about the visual aspects of performances which took place 300-400 years ago is scant.
Moreover, there is a driving imperative these days to make contemporary performances relevant. There are occasions when the introduction of modern-day political or cultural themes into what are otherwise authentic historical musical productions add immensely to their power and universality. One thinks for example of Christie’s brilliant collaboration with director Peter Sellars in Theodora at Glyndebourne in 1996. Commenting on barbaric aspects of modern-day America, the Christian heroine and her converted Roman lover Didymus found themselves on a gurney in a Texas military hospital awaiting execution.
How then to protect the integrity of the original work while adapting it to appeal to those going to opera and concerts in the twenty-first century? The difficulty of resolving this dilemma was underscored in a rather uneven Tanglewood production of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. Adapting and updating a ‘semi- opera’ – a seventeenth-century play interpolated with substantial musical entertainments or masques – is not easy. Based very loosely on an anonymous adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Purcell’s ‘Restoration Spectacular’ became a drama in five acts featuring a crowd of singers, actors and dancers. Here is a contemporary account of what the original lavish production might have looked like when first performed in May 1692 at the Dorset Court theatre near Fleet Street:
‘This [comedy by Mr Shakespeare] in ornaments was Superior…especially in the Cloathes, for all the Singers
and Dancers, Scenes, Machines, and Decorations, all
profusely set off, and excellently performed, chiefly the
Instrumental and Vocal part Compos’d by the said Mr Purcel
and the dances by Mr Priest. The Court and Town were wonderfully
satisfied with it; but the Expences in setting it out being so great, the Company got very little by it.‘
In the Tanglewood adaptation, Christie’s 24-strong orchestra, which included valveless trumpets, kettle drums, lute and harpsichord, assembled on a platform at the back of the dimly lit Ozawa stage. A stirring and splendidly played overture preceded a team of fine singers and a troupe of energetic break dancers, choreographed by Mourad Merzouki. All were dressed soberly in black, save for a glimpse of colour in the second half when the cast appeared in an array of muted brown and blue tops. Arias were for the most part wonderfully well sung, and in traditional Christie fashion, the singers moved and danced expressively with the music, which provided an additional emotional dimension. British baritone Hugo Herman-Wilson contributed a moment of high comedy as the wildly lurching Drunken Poet in full song (‘Fill up the bowl’), while silver-voiced Lithuanian tenor Ilja Aksionov gave a sensuously delicate account of ‘One charming night brings more delight’. Rodrigo Carreto is a conspicuously talented young Portuguese tenor. His merry ‘Come all you songsters of the sky’ animated by elbow-flapping avian dancers, and icy account of ‘What a cruel long winter’ were among the highlights of the evening. Mezzo-soprano Juliet Mey, accompanied on stage by Augusta McKay’s violin, touched the heart in the plaint, ‘O let me ever, ever weep’, and the exceptionally talented soprano Rebecca Leggett captivated as Juno in ‘Thrice happy lovers’. There were many other fine moments in a successive parade of masques leading to the final chorus ‘They shall be happy as they’re fair’. The dancers performed with commendable athleticism and commitment throughout, but the recurring juxtaposition of high-spirited hip hop – a repeated stylistic device doubtless intended to translate Purcell’s baroque masterpiece into our own times, overpowered it. In the end it proved to be something of a distraction and ultimately dispelled many magic moments in an otherwise excellent production.
Chris Sallon
Excellent review! Chock full of information, fine descriptions and characterizations, particular accolades for deserving artists, a lucid explanation of the problems facing any modern staging, sympathetic accounts of many striking successes, and appropriate comments on distracting elements. A very strong piece of writing, thinking, and feeling!