Purcell: The Fairy Queen

by William Christie, Les Arts Florissants

Overview

Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen, based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, is sometimes called an opera; English audiences of Purcell's day would have used the term semi-opera, indicating a mixture of music and speech. It might also be called incidental music, intended for insertion into Shakespeare's drama. Whatever it is, it is a) absolutely packed with Purcell's very best tunes and b) something of a mess, with dialogue and many short pieces that might or might not be used. This 1989 recording by William Christie and his group Les Arts Florissants shows the work at its best, filled with zippy melodies and enhanced by a large, flexible continuo group that keeps the foot-tapping rhythms coming. Christie was, and is, best known for French music, but there was a lot of the French Baroque in Purcell's little chunks of dance music, and he made this work come alive with humor and color. It is also true that by 1989, audiences were realizing that Christie was offering something quite new in Baroque music, and this production attracted top-notch singers, including Sandrine Piau and Véronique Gens; perhaps their English was not uniformly successful, but they were a big stride ahead of the ones in Christie's recording of Dido and Aeneas just a few years before. The bottom line is that this recording, reissued several times with the late '80s sound cleaned up, has really never been superseded. ~ James Manheim

Product Details

Release Date:	09/29/2023
Label:	HARMONIA MUNDI
UPC:	3149020950104

Album Credits

Performance Credits

William Christie   Primary Artist,Conductor
Les Arts Florissants   Primary Artist,Ensemble
Christophe Rousset   Clavecin,Organ
George Banks-Martin   Bass (Vocal)
Christophe LePaludier   Haute Contre Vocal
Richard Taylor   Bass (Vocal)
Ryo Terakado   Violin
Les Arts Florissants Chorus   Choir/Chorus
Bernard Deletre   Bass (Vocal)
Francois Piolino   Tenor (Vocal)
Sandrine Piau   Soprano (Vocal)
Bernhard Loonen   Tenor (Vocal)
Isabelle Desrochers   Soprano (Vocal)
David Simpson   Cello
Eric Bellocq   Theorbo
Mike Fentross   Baroque Guitar,Theorbo
Jean-Paul Fouchecourt   Haute Contre Vocal
Noam Krieger   Clavecin
Mark Le Brocq   Haute Contre Vocal
Jerome Correas   Bass (Vocal)
Anne-Marie Lasla   Viola da Gamba
Noemi Rime   Soprano (Vocal)
Thomas Lander   Bass (Vocal)
Francois Bazola   Baritone (Vocal)
Thomas Randle   Tenor (Vocal)
Willemijn Van Gent   Soprano (Vocal)
Nancy Argenta   Soprano (Vocal)
Charles Daniels   Haute Contre Vocal
Lynne Dawson   Soprano (Vocal)
Veronique Gens   Soprano (Vocal)

Technical Credits

Christophe Rousset   Assistant
Johann Heinrich Fuessli   Cover Art
Madeleine Sola   Engineer
Derek Yeld   Liner Note Translation
John Buttrey   Liner Notes
Henry Purcell   Composer
Michel Bernard   Producer
Liesel B. Sayre   Liner Note Translation
Jacques Meunier   Liner Note Translation
Brigitte Barchasz   Liner Note Translation
Pierre Bornard   Editing