The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell
This new production for the 2009 Festival has now finished
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Sung in English with supertitles
Conductor Bill Christie introduces the Music of The Fairy Queen:
Director Jonathan Kent talks about his approach to the masque form for this new production:
Listen to the podcast featuring interviews with Jonathan Kent, Director, and Paul Brown, Designer, about this new production.
The Fairy Queen is Purcell’s joyous response to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, incorporating much of Shakespeare’s text into a fascinating carnival of music, theatre and dance. In addition to Shakespeare’s characters, Purcell also conjures up a wild array of gods and goddesses, nymphs and sprites, fairies and shepherds, dancing swans and figures of dream.
Purcell’s score takes the form of a series of fantastical masques, culminating in a lavish wedding ceremony presided over by the great god Hymen himself. Not only does the work contain the composer’s finest, wittiest and most inventive score, but it calls for such staggering scenic effects that, when first performed, the cost of the sets and costumes almost bankrupted the theatre.
With Baroque specialist William Christie returning to conduct the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Glyndebourne’s first ever staging of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen marks the 350th anniversary of its composer’s birth with what promises to be a joyous celebration of Englishness, in all its rich eccentricity, brought to new life by director Jonathan Kent (following his thrilling The Turn of the Screw for the 2007 Festival), choreographer Kim Brandstrup and designer Paul Brown.
New edition for The Purcell Society by Bruce Wood and Andrew Pinnock performed by arrangement with Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Performance schedule
Key
* = Pre-performance talk available in the in the Ebert Room.
Creative team
Conductor William Christie / Laurence Cummings (25, 28, 30 July, 4, 8 August)
Director Jonathan Kent
Designer Paul Brown
Lighting Designer Mark Henderson
Choreographer Kim Brandstrup
Chorus Master Thomas Blunt
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
The Glyndebourne Chorus
Cast includes:
Carolyn Sampson
Lucy Crowe
Claire Debono
Ed Lyon
Robert Burt
Andrew Foster-Williams
Study event
Sunday 10 May Ebert Room
Pre-performance talk
Sunday 19 July