Christie’s Tanglewood Fairy Queen has some magic moments however finally fails to enchant – Seen and Heard Worldwide

United States Tanglewood Pageant 2024 [5] – Purcell, The Fairy Queen: Soloists, Les Arts Florissants / William Christie (music director). Seiji Ozawa Corridor, 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 Faculty: Baptiste Coppin, Ian Debono, Samuel Florimond, Anahi Passi, Alary-Youra Ravin and Timothée Zig

Stage director and Choreographer – Mourad Merzouki

William Christie was as soon as hailed in an interview in The Spectator as ‘The Solar God of Early Music’. A distinguished musicologist, harpsichordist and conductor, he and Les Arts Florissants – the interval instrument ensemble he based ‘within the title of creativity, pleasure and sharing’- have been described as pioneers within the revival of Baroque music, significantly the rediscovery of operas lengthy forgotten. Christie has led the sector in bringing not often carried out works by the likes of Monteverdi, Lully, Charpentier and Handel to wider audiences. He has been exceptionally efficient in overcoming the inherent challenges of mounting traditionally knowledgeable productions. Profitable productions rely on three predominant elements: phrases, music and staging. Phrases and music have for essentially the most half come down the centuries intact.  Christie, a stickler for expressive and correct enunciation and insistent on excellent phrasing, dynamics and steadiness, breathes new life and nice magnificence into fossilised seventeenth and eighteenth century scores. More difficult manufacturing issues relate to staging, motion and dance. Surviving details about the visible points of performances which befell 300-400 years in the past is scant.

Furthermore, there’s a driving crucial lately to make up to date performances related. There are events when the introduction of modern-day political or cultural themes into what are in any other case genuine historic musical productions add immensely to their energy and universality. One thinks for instance of Christie’s good collaboration with director Peter Sellars in Theodora at Glyndebourne in 1996. Commenting on barbaric points of modern-day America, the Christian heroine and her transformed Roman lover Didymus discovered themselves on a gurney in a Texas navy hospital awaiting execution.

How then to guard the integrity of the unique work whereas adapting it to attraction to these going to opera and live shows within the twenty-first century? The problem of resolving this dileMMA was underscored in a reasonably uneven Tanglewood manufacturing of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. Adapting and updating a ‘semi- opera’ – a seventeenth-century play interpolated with substantial musical Entertainments or masques – just isn’t straightforward. Based mostly very loosely on an nameless adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Evening’s Dream, Purcell’s ‘Restoration Spectacular’ turned a drama in 5 acts that includes a crowd of singers, actors and dancers. Here’s a up to date account of what the unique lavish manufacturing might need seemed like when first carried out in Might 1692 on the Dorset Courtroom theatre close to Fleet Avenue:

‘This [comedy by Mr Shakespeare] in ornaments was Superior…particularly within the Cloathes, for all of the Singers
and Dancers, Scenes, Machines, and Decorations, all
profusely set off, and excellently carried out, mainly the
Instrumental and Vocal half Compos’d by the stated Mr Purcel
and the dances by Mr Priest. The Courtroom and City had been splendidly
glad with it; however the Expences in setting it out being so nice, the Firm received little or no by it.‘

Within the Tanglewood adaptation, Christie’s 24-strong orchestra, which included valveless trumPets, kettle drums, lute and harpsichord, assembled on a platform behind the dimly lit Ozawa stage. A stirring and splendidly performed overture preceded a crew of wonderful singers and a troupe of energetic break dancers, choreographed by Mourad Merzouki. All had been dressed soberly in black, save for a glimpse of color within the second half when the forged appeared in an array of muted brown and blue tops. Arias had been for essentially the most half splendidly properly sung, and in conventional Christie vogue, the singers moved and danced expressively with the music, which supplied a further emotional dimension. British baritone Hugo Herman-Wilson contributed a second of excessive comedy because the wildly lurching Drunken Poet in full tune (‘Replenish the bowl’), whereas silver-voiced Lithuanian tenor Ilja Aksionov gave a sensuously delicate account of ‘One charming evening brings extra delight’. Rodrigo Carreto is a conspicuously gifted younger Portuguese tenor. His merry ‘Come all you songsters of the sky’ animated by elbow-flapping avian dancers, and icy account of ‘What a merciless lengthy winter’ had been among the many highlights of the night. Mezzo-soprano Juliet Mey, accompanied on stage by Augusta McKay’s violin, touched the center within the plaint, ‘O let me ever, ever weep’, and the exceptionally gifted soprano Rebecca Leggett captivated as Juno in ‘Thrice completely happy lovers’. There have been many different wonderful moments in a successive parade of masques resulting in the ultimate refrain ‘They shall be completely happy as they’re honest’. The dancers carried out with commendable athleticism and dedication all through, however the recurring juxtaposition of high-spirited hip hop – a repeated stylistic gadget likely meant to translate Purcell’s baroque masterpiece into our personal instances, overpowered it. Ultimately it proved to be one thing of a distraction and finally dispelled many magic moments in an in any other case wonderful manufacturing.

Chris Sallon