Recently Heard: The Fairy Queen

[ellyssian]

Purcell - The Fairy Queen / Hunt, Pierard, Bickley, Crook, Padmore, Wilson-Johnson, Wistreich, Schütz Choir, LCP, Norrington

While I have a number of operas in my collection, most are from the romantic period - to be fair, early, middle, and late romantic works are represented, but not a single Mozartian or Beethovian or Otherwisian (save two more modern pieces, one an oratorio by Paul McCartney, the other a vampire opera with a heavily synthesized orchestra).

Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen is definitely a first for me - an opera from the Baroque period. I've heard the overture before, and it is a beautiful work - fits in nicely with Bach and Haydn and other harpsichord-centric pieces of that era.

On first listen, without paying the libretto any mind, some Mozart operas come to mind, or perhaps it would be better to stick with works of the period. Upon paying attention, though, a difference becomes clear: no Latin, Italian, or German for the libretto: it's in English.

Now I've gone on record for having a dislike of using English in a libretto - it often shows off that music is the strong point and the words are, well, somewhere between puerile and pure cheese. The writing here seems Shakespearian, and I suppose there's good reason for that: the text, while not transcribed from, was heavily influenced by A Midsummer Night's Dream. In this case, it's presented as a series of entertainments for Titania and, later, the mortals.

Although there are indications that some of the quaintness of Shakespeare's language was stripped away as a side-effect of the Restoration, there's enough that made it through - likely on account of the language of that day still seeming antiquated by todays standards - that it deflects some of the corniness that might otherwise come through.

The first line that really caught my ear was "Hold you damn'd tormenting Punk, I do confess-" "What, what?" "I'm Drunk, as I live Boys, I'm Drunk." And you just can't get any better than that.

Well, except when the chorus comes in a short while later with: "Pinch him, pinch him for his Crimes, His Nonsense, and his Dogrel Rhymes."