Purcell's Fairy Queen
A production for Armonico
Touring Opera
Produced by Thomas Guthrie
Designed by Roger Butlin
Musical Director Chris Monks
"A glorious evening", Opera Now
"superb", The Times
Named as one of Barry Millington's cultural highlights
of 2006:
"The Armonico Consort's astonishing
production of Purcell's Fairy Queen (Chelsea
Festival, June) was a hugely enjoyable fusion of
music, drama, puppetry and acrobatics. If there's
more to come as exhilarating as this, I'll be first
in the queue." Barry Millington, Evening
Standard
This production is loosely based on the character of the great fairy artist Richard Dadd, whose fantasy fuelled imagination fed on Shakespeare's plays and led to acknowledged masterpieces such as The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke, Titania Sleeping and Contradiction: Oberon and Titania. Dadd was imprisoned in Bedlam and then Broadmoor after killing his father and being declared insane. There a doctor recognised his artistic genius and also that any hope of recovery lay in finding an outlet for his extraordinary imagination.
The production is set in a mental hospital, in which Dadd leads us through Purcell's musical fantasy as if it were one of his own. It includes spectacular trapeze, representing the idealised upper world of the imagination and the spirits, and puppets, representing the symbolism of marriage and the longing for physical and spiritual union. By turns comic and moving, it explores themes such as the intrigues of love and relationship, of life in all its human and superhuman dimensions, love-sickness, loss of identity, and fate.
"highly inventive staging...worked wonders...with the help of a vocally outstanding cast, Guthrie (widely praised for his staged version of Die Winterreise) evoked a strange, mysterious netherworld...above all, the sleep sequence was magically staged; nurses and doctors hovered like compassionate demigods, as if external forces were striving to cure the pains and anxieties of distracted human beings...Guthrie’s hilarious depiction of the drunken poet, preceded by a mesmerizing trapeze routine, conjured up memories of the “heavenly” Titania and “earthen” Bottom...every small “hospital” routine — the ritual of making beds, adjusting pillows, checking notes — became a tiny fey ritual, resembling parts of a dance...Guthrie’s treatment of the wedding scene, performed with a pair of eerily lifelike puppets, was hypnotic; and the descent of Phoebus (a life-sized puppet) added yet another arresting effect to an evening that was beguiling from start to finish", Opera News Online
Performances in 2007
Norfolk and Norwich Festival, 9th May 2007
Bournemouth, 24th May 2007
Downpatrick, Ireland, 9th June 2007
Beaminster, 28th June 2007
Harrogate International Festival, 27th July 2007
Lake District Summer Music, 3rd August 2007
