Simon Jenner August 6th 2024
In a Proms year of celebrating A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Mendelssohn, Britten), this is at once the most zany yet nearest in time to Shakespeare. The last time Purcell’s largest semi-opera came here, also with Les Arts Florissants, directed then by founder William Christie, it was in 2009: a four-hour fully-staged behemoth with dialogue directed by Jonathan Kent.
Now under co-director (since 2019) Paul Agnew, this more modest two-hours-fifteen production (three hours were cleared for it) reverts to earlier productions in a musically riveting, dramatically rather episodic production where the dancers and singers make the best of it. Staged by Mourad Merzouki it’s fresh and sleek, full of street-dancing, hip-hop moves and somersaults around baroque singers. Even in Restoration times it was called music-drama. So we’ve caught up with it finally.
The challenge is to understand not what is broadly going on, though that’s not always clear. There are screens conveying text, but only two that I saw and aimed determinedly at the expensive seats, with the Arena making the best of it and anyone above the second tiers nothing at all but with binoculars.
With no text (a slim one easily reproducible in the programme, a real omission), or easy identification of the six singers to roles, all one can sometimes do is marvel at the dramatic aplomb and musicianship. And laugh out loud at, or rather with, the dancers.
So semi-staged with dancers, without the dialogue mangled from Shakespeare, and thus bearing absolutely no resemblance to A Midsummer Night’s Dream that inspired it. What we have is a glorious Restoration farrago using masques – something around in Shakespeare’s time but which his budget rarely reached to.
Certainly after the interval it’s masques only: the shadow of the play has almost been left behind. In Act V there’s nods to royal taste in Chinese characters and indeed a monkey dance. Some period sensibilities really are best left to scholarship.
Indeed some re-ordering and re-thinking of the work’s very nature have been effected by Agnew and Merzouki. Not that ‘Let the Fifes and the Clarions’ a glorious arousal of very different temper to even Purcell’s re-thinking is a dramatic, more a musical loss.
From the company’s Le Jardin des Voix, the six singers are outstanding: Paulina Francisco (soprano, as Titania), Georgia Burashko (mezzo), Rebecca Leggett (mezzo), Ilja Aksionov (tenor, as Mopsa a drag role), Hugo Herman-Wilson (baritone, as Corydon’s Mopsa’s bashful lover in the uproarious “no, no kissing at all” and the drunken poet), Benjamin Schilperoort (bass-baritone).
They’re joined by an equal number of tumbling dancers: Baptiste Coppin, Samuel Florimond, Anahi Passi, Alary-Youra Ravin, Daniel Saad, Timothée Zig. Easily the funniest and most idiosyncratic of their moves came early, as they preened and cocked their way around as birds to ‘Come All Ye Songsters of the Sky’, hands held like pigeon-tails behind backs, a real coo de theatre.
The programme notes the acrobatics of Compagnie Käfig, where the dancers performed this. We don’t get that, but being semi-staged it’s still a feast. What Merzouki manages is to allow his dancers to weave and match singers dramatically. They never upstage: their own highlights occur during instrumental numbers. Staging integrates them in a way rarely seen. It’s one of this production’s great strengths.
It wasn’t easy to identify most soloists. Baritone Hugo Herman-Wilson’s drunken poet caroused and lurched his way across, yielding to Francisco’s superb Titania (‘If Love’s a Sweet Passion’) but he later returned in a gallimaufry of roles showing range and stage-power; particularly as sex-shy Corydon being snogged by amorous tenor Ilja Aksionov’s Mopsa. He’s easily the most riveting actor there and draws the audience’s energy to him, giving back gusts, indeed subtlety.
Aksionov sounded subtle notes too, in his cleanly-delivered ‘One Charming Night’, while bass-baritone Benjamin Schilperoort sung ‘Hush, No More’ in a rapt dark dream.
The highlight though came in Act V, after the Seasons masque. After mezzo Rebecca Leggett’s Juno ‘Thrice Happy Lovers’ Francisco emerges in a stunning moment with The ‘Plaint’ “Oh let me weep”, a showstopper. As she sang, surely hinting at an unwritten successor to Dido and Aeneas, first violinist Augusta McKay Lodge walked out and played the lead, weaving around Francisco; a devastating spell. It was worth it for this alone.
The fact Glyndebourne’s Gulio Cesare currently features just such a moment suggests less borrowing a gesture, more reverting to an ancient fusion of performers and soloists. It’s increasingly organic to period performance – and rivetingly theatrical.
Shout out too for Assistant Choreographer Rémi Autechaud, the elegantly minimal and parti-coloured costumes of Claire Schirck, and more than a nod to Fabrice Sarcy’s lighting. Mostly it plunged us into darkness, with colour-coding for the magnificent orchestral sunrise (orange) and mood-colours intended to dominate. Again they worked if you were at the same level as the singers and orchestra. But most in the Hall weren’t. So what we saw was a brightness to cast shadows. The celebrated soprano Sophie Daneman is language coach to the international cast. We miss her.
BBC Prom 24 Purcell The Fairy Queen, Les Arts Florissants/Agnew at the Royal Albert Hall, August 6th 2024
A musically riveting, dramatically rather episodic production where the dancers and singers make the best of it
Les Arts Florisant/Paul Agnew
BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, Kensington
http://www.royalalberthall.com
In a Proms year of celebrating A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Mendelssohn, Britten), this is at once the most zany yet nearest in time to Shakespeare. Purcell’s largest semi-opera with Les Arts Florissants, is directed by co-director Paul Agnew.
This modest two-hours-fifteen production (three hours were cleared for it) is a musically riveting, dramatically rather episodic production where the dancers and singers make the best of it.
BBC Prom 24 Purcell The Fairy Queen, Les Arts Florisant/Agnew at the Royal Albert Hall, August 6th 2024