Product Description
-------------------
Jonathan Kent's spectacular production of Purcell's huge
semi-opera is joyous, imaginative and witty Glyndebourne, with
its auditorium, provides the perfect setting for a drama
which is partly spoken and partly sung. Based on an adaptation of
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the story is lavished
with a brilliance that justifies this production's accl. Paul
Brown's inventive designs, Kim Brandstrup's exquisite
choreography, an excellent cast of actors and singers and
outstanding playing by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
under William Christie combine to make a seamless theatrical
experience, here recorded in High Definition and true surround
sound.
Press Reviews
"There are too many highlights to mention in this varied and
infinitely delightful entertainment. Glyndebourne has a triumph
on its hands." (The Stage)
"The whole presentation combines charm and period
musicality...In most respects visually and dramatically this is a
triumph." (The Penguin Guide)
"A riotously funny, ravishingly intelligent staging of Fairy
Queen." (BBC Music Magazine)
"...this DVD conveys an exceptionally spectacular event in the
theatre." (Gramophone)
Awards
Gramophone Award: DVD Performance (2010)
Cast
Lucy Crowe (Soprano)
Carolyn Sampson (Soprano)
Ed Lyon (Tenor)
Andrew Foster-Williams (Bass)
Sally Dexter (Titania)
Joseph Millson (Oberon)
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; William Christie
Production
Company: Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Stage Director: Jonathan Kent
Disc Information
Catalogue Number: OABD7065D
Date of Performance: 2009
Running Time: 230 minutes
Sound: 5.1 DTS Master Audio
Aspect Ratio: 1080i High Definition / 16:9
Subtitles: EN, FR, DE, ES
Label: Opus Arte
Review
------
The anonymous 1691 adaptor of A Midsummer Night's Dream cut out
some of Shakespeare's text, and added elaborate masque scenes
which Purcell set to music. Sometimes the masque scenes actually
have some relation to the events in the play: the scene in which
the fairies torment the drunken poet (in Act 1, added in 1692)
can be understood as a sort of prehistory of the processes of
absurd invention that lead Peter Quince to write the Pyramus and
Thisbe skit; and a later masque can be understood as a monstrous
expansion of Shakespeare's insecticidal charm ("You spotted
snakes with double tongue"). But it would be easy to listen to
all two hours of Purcell's music without understanding that it
had anything to do with A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The curtain rises, and we are in Shakespeare's Act 1, with wigs
and costumes in eighteenth-century style, as Athenian justice
condemns the love of Lysander and Hermia; but soon the janitorial
crew takes over--it turns out that Peter Quince and his gang are
window washers, theatre electricians, sweepers, and so forth. All
this runs by at spanking pace, with many delightful touches, as
when the scene ends in a blackout from an electrical malfunction,
and we are in the world of Purcell's first-act masque, the scene
with the drunken poet. The poet is played by the actor who plays
Bottom, Desmond Barrit, a superb comedian, but a mediocre singer,
and the scene is funnier when more strongly voiced. Also, it
would make more than to have Peter Quince at the clavier (so to
speak) in this scene, since he's the poet of the horny-handed. As
in his audio , Christie takes enormous rhythmic
liberties with the score ("I'm drunk as I live boys, drunk"), to
brilliant effect, making the poet's song into a sea-shanty in
which the whole earth is the ship on which the drunkard sways.
For the rest of the semi-opera, we are in a world of dreams
shadowing into nightmares: the fairies have black raggy wings; a
giant spider swaths Titania in silk and dangles her in the air.
In the more cheerful masques in the later acts, there is only
occasionally a sense of good-natured fun--more often there is a
certain lurid glare, a frantic, slightly brittle attempt at
funning, as when music celebrating the earth's generative
energies is mimed by actors in bunny suits madly copulating in
many different positions... The only real miscalculation here, I
think, is moving of the Pyramus and Thisbe skit from Act 3 to Act
5. This is, of course, where Shakespeare puts it, but The Fairy
Queen's climax is supposed be the masque set in China, a
deliberately fake version of an age of old where nobody works and
everybody has a good time all day. This production de-sinifies
the masque, for no good reason: instead of Chinese lovers, we
have Adam and an extremely flirtatious Eve. The benediction of
Purcell's incomparable chaconne shouldn't be spread over an
audience that has recently laughed at Bottom's death scene.
-Daniel Albright -- Opera Today - July 14, 2010
