John Eliot Gardiner, The English Baroque Soloists - Henry Purcell: The Fairy Queen (1982)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 664 Mb | Total time: 137:46 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Archiv Produktion | # 419 221-2 | Recorded: 1981
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 664 Mb | Total time: 137:46 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Archiv Produktion | # 419 221-2 | Recorded: 1981
This 1981 recording was the first period-instrument version of Purcell's most famous "semi-opera." This Restoration-era hybrid was a play with a complete (spoken) script plus numerous musical numbers for soloists, chorus, and pit orchestra. The Fairy Queen is based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, although you'd never know it from the music, which has (typically for the genre) no real connection to the plot. (Most of the songs and dances are masques performed for the entertainment of Titania, Oberon, or Hippolytus.) The advantage to this is that Purcell's score can be performed fairly well on its own. The Fairy Queen includes some of Purcell's best-loved comic scenes ("The Drunken Poet" and "Coridon and Mopsa") and songs ("Hark the echoing Air," "Ye gentle spirits," and "Hark how all things in one sound rejoice"–the last sung here by Jennifer Smith, sounding more beautiful than on any recording she's made since).