Join us for a musical afternoon with the Bard on this week’s Sunday Opera (7/14 3:00 p.m.) as we begin our time together with Henry Purcell’s treatment of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” lovingly known as “The Fairy Queen.”
This scant two-hour piece with a libretto by an anonymous author, features most of the story of the play, however, it seems to focus a bit more on Titania’s infatuation with Bottom who is turned into an ass after her eyes are dosed with “Love-in-Idleness,” a wild pansy said to have been turned purple after being struck by one of Cupid’s errant arrows.
The cast for this production that comes to us from the Utrecht Early Music Festival in the Netherlands includes soprano Paulina Francisco, mezzo-sopranos Georgia Burashko, Rebecca Leggett, and Juliette Mey, tenors Rodrigo Carreto and Iljia Aksinov, baritone Hugo Herman-Wilson and bass-baritone Benjamin Schilperoort. They’re joined by Les Arts Florissants and Le Jardin des Voix which are conducted, of course, by William Christie.
We’ll shift gears just a little and turn to Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” for the rest of the afternoon. There’s a story regarding the shift, but It’s just too long and tedious to go into. Suffice it to say, we’ll hear three full (and a bit) treatments of themes from the story of the magical Prospero and his daughter Miranda.
The first is a bit of a Restoration mash-up of music by Purcell as well as Locke, Humfrey, Draghi, and others that has been titled “The Enchanted Isle.” This performance of the complete score, including dances features soloists joined by The Musicians of the Globe conducted by Philip Pickett.
We’ll jump approximately 200 years for the Tempest Symphonic Fantasy of Tchaikovsky performed by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antoni Wit.
After a short dip into the incidental music for a stage production of “The Tempest” by Jean Sibelius, we’ll conclude our time together with Paul Moravec’s 2004 Pulitzer Prize winning Tempest Fantasy performed by the Trio Solisti assisted by clarinetist David Krakauer.
