The Fairy Queen
Part of the 2010 Spring Season and the BAM Opera Festival
Mar 23, 25—27 at 7:30pm
The Fairy Queen
By Henry Purcell
Les Arts Florissants
Produced by Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Opéra Comique, Théâtre de Caen, and BAM
Musical direction by William Christie
Directed by Jonathan Kent
BAM Opera Festival’s Centerpiece
The Fairy Queen is a semi-opera (or dramatic opera), an early form of opera from the English Baroque that combines spoken plays with intermittent singing and dancing. Considered Purcell’s greatest work in this form, The Fairy Queen was thought to be lost following his death but rediscovered at the turn of the 20th century. BAM presents a new edition of Purcell’s score, first performed in July of 2009 by Glyndebourne Festival Opera in celebration of the 350th anniversary of Purcell's birth.
“William Christie conducts…with his customary bonhomie and spirit of fun, using the lightest of touches to capture all of Purcell’s playfully sly and sexy charm.”—The Telegraph (UK)
Part play, part song and dance, Henry Purcell’s ribald and irreverent semi-opera The Fairy Queen, in a production by Glyndebourne Festival Opera directed by Jonathan Kent, glistens with theatrical magic. No one knows who wrote the text—a Restoration-era take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream —that slyly comments and elaborates on Shakespeare’s comedy.
First performed in 1692, Purcell’s lustrous music, conducted by William Christie (March 23, 25 & 26) and Jonathan Cohen (March 27), evokes both the whimsy of Shakespeare’s language and the blithe, political, and frequently bawdy tone of the adaptation. Opening in a formal 17th-century library, The Fairy Queen gives way to utter fantasy as fairies spill from the shelves, gods and goddesses fly in from above and below, and spellbound lovers succumb to emotion and the sensual.
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
225min with intermission
Subscription tickets: $28, 52, 84, 120
Full price: $35, 65, 105, 150
In English with titles
Conducted by William Christie (Mar 23, 25, 26) and Jonathan Cohen (Mar 27)
Set design and costumes by Paul Brown
Lighting design by Mark Henderson
Choreography by Kim Brandstrup
Chorus Master Thomas Blunt
Emmanuelle De Negri (Night/the Plaint), Lucy Crowe (Juno), Claire Debono (Mystery/Fairy/Nymph), Miriam Allan and Anna Devin (Fairies), Ed Lyon (Chinese Man); Robert Burt (Mopsa), Andrew Foster-Williams (Hymen/Sleep/Winter), Sean Clayton (Summer), David Webb (Autumn), Andrew Davies (Phoebus)
Review: The New York Times on The Fairy Queen
“When Mr. Christie first turned up at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in 1989, it was with a production of Lully’s Atys that quickly created a passion in New York for lavishly staged French Baroque opera. Perhaps this Fairy Queen will do the same for this entertainingly quirky English style.”
Article: Jonathan Kent on staging The Fairy Queen
The Fairy Queen director Jonathan Kent talks about his approach to staging Purcell’s “Restoration spectacular.”
Article: classicalTV interview with director Jonathan Kent
“The point of it was to astonish and delight and beguile, visually as much as anything, and we’ve tried to find a 21st-century way of responding to that.”