Purcell Gets New Packaging from harmonia mundi

This coming Friday, harmonia mundi will reissue a single package of two recordings of operas by Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy-Queen. These albums were originally released in the late Eighties, Dido in 1986 and Fairy-Queen in 1989. The performers were the vocalists and instrumentalists of Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie. As is usually the case, those that cannot wait will be able to pre-order the physical album through a Web page on the Collectors’ Choice Music Web site.

I suspect that, like myself, most readers will be more familiar with Dido than with Fairy-Queen. In my own case, the familiarity with the former involves performances, as well as recordings. The latter, on the other hand, was known to me only by name. It is much longer than Dido, accounting for the latter two of the three CDs in the package. The booklet attributes the libretto to “an anonymous author after William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights’ Dream.”

Title page of the original printed edition of The Fairy-Queen (from the Wikipedia page for the opera, public domain)

The booklet also describes the music as an “Opera in 5 acts.” However, taken as a whole, the work is not so much a musical account of a narrative as it is an assemblage of five “Masques” (as they are identified on the Wikipedia page) with a generous serving of instrumental music. Personally, I prefer this terminology, since, in my own opinion, the work lacks the narrative thread that is much better defined in Dido (and shows more respect to Shakespeare). Nevertheless, when taken as a whole, this offering certainly provides a full evening of entertainment!

The one vocal selection that is familiar to me only arises during the final Masque. “Hark! the echoing air” is sung by “a Chinese woman.” (Don’t ask!) This is a text couplet, which concludes, “And all around pleased Cupids clap their wings.” This is followed by so many repetitions of “clap” that I always lose count! (I first encountered it on a Russell Oberlin album during my student days. I would play it for friends, telling them, “You’re not going to believe this!”) Mind you, I certainly appreciate having this “Purcell coupling” in my collection; but, where The Fairy-Queen is concerned, I am reminded of an old motto about the Sunday edition of The New York Times: “You don’t have to read it all, but it’s good to know it’s all there!”