Cheap Purcell - The Fairy Queen / English National Opera (DVD) (Barrie Gavin) Price

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Customer Reviews of Purcell - The Fairy Queen / English National Opera

Playing and singing are a delight from beginning to end.

Highly recommended.

Hard to caracterize
Purcell has for a long time been one of my favorite composers and I have always found it sad that his musical plays are not more frequently staged. However, this production bears out the statement of an opera singer friend that too often contemporary directors ruin good operas. Musically and vocally this production is very good, but the visual production is very distracting. It is perhaps inevitable that, given the fact that the action is largely in the form of the masque, there would be a very large dance component. This in itself is not problematic. However, when one of the principal singing characters (Oberon) seems to have been chosen more for his athletic/dance capabilities than for his vocal ones, one has to question the agenda. Also, sets and business were frequently incomprehensible. And, although as others have said, there does appear to be a particular social agenda being pushed, much of it was just simply silly and rather stupid.

After seeing this production, I wish even more strongly for a production that would be fearless enough to do this work in an antiquarian style, so that we might have an idea of what Purcell's original audiences saw. A beautiful example of such a production is one of the 2002 production of Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" under the direction of Jordi Savall from the BBC. Let's hope that Purcell will eventually get a similar treatment.

Perhaps you have to be English...
I must say - I read the predominately hostile reviews here with some surprise.

Henry Purcell has long been regarded as England's greatest composer. His range was broad - from music of great majesty and solemnity at one extreme to bawdy drinking songs at the other. The masques, such as THE FAIRY QUEEN, THE INDIAN QUEEN and KING ARTHUR are firmly placed at the lighter end of the scale.

Note; I'm not saying that the masques are necessarily trivial or uninspired. There are beautiful things in them all. But they were first and foremost designed as entertainments.

It made perfect sense, then, for David Pountney to stage THE FAIRY QUEEN in an essentially playful manner. The set designs, the costumes, the choreography, the cross-casting all conform to this lets-have-fun approach.

As I say in the summary, perhaps you have to be English to appreciate it. There is a long tradition in the English theatre of whimsy, of gender confusion and a particular kind of melancholy which matches the English character.

But - and it's a big but - this production, while it has all kinds of fun with the staging, treats the music with the respect it deserves. The singing and playing are both fine and the sound remarkably good considering that this is a taping of a live performance. Titania's Plaint is especially fine with the beautiful oboe playing setting off the lyrics to perfection.

Please - this is not Grand Opera. It's meant to be enjoyed on a less formal basis than that, and this DVD succeeds in communicating that enjoyment to the viewer.

Technically, the sound (LPCM in the UK) on this DVD is fine and the visuals (transferred from 16:9 HDTV) reasonable considering the circumstances under which it was taped.