The Fairy Queen
The Fairy-Queen is a masque or semi-opera by Henry Purcell . The work was premiered on May 2, 1692 at the Queen's Theater, Dorset Garden in London . The libretto is an anonymous adaptation of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream , the author is believed to be Thomas Betterton .
Origin and impact history
After the great success of his operas Dioclesian (1690) and King Arthur (1691), Purcell composed The Fairy-Queen in 1692 . At that time Shakespeare's Midsummer Night 's Dream was about a hundred years old; its text has now been adapted to contemporary tastes, and the role of the fairy queen has been more emphasized. In particular, the work was shortened to allow the introduction of musical scenes.
The 1692 Fairy Queen was a great success , but it turned out to be costly to perform. In order to recoup their expenses, the United Company theater company re-played the play the following year, with some musical changes. Two new arias were added: one in the third act, "Ye gentle spirits of the air", and one in the fifth act, "O let me ever, ever weep", although they have nothing at all to do with the plot. In addition, the first scene of the original piece - the appearance of Prince Theseus , Egeus and the lovers - was deleted to make room for a new musical episode. The audience of 1693 must have known Shakespeare's play so well that this omission seemed unimportant, even if it made the story lose all cohesion. In the added musical part, the elves discover three drunken poets in the forest, torture them and then send them to sleep so that they can get rid of their intoxication.
After Purcell's death, the score was lost and was not rediscovered until the early 20th century.
Form and content
The play is divided into five acts . The text is sung by 16 soloists and a four-part choir , which mostly repeats the musical content of the arias . The orchestra consists of two flutes, two oboes, two trumpets, timpani, strings and a harpsichord .
Purcell's version of the Fairy Queen is typical of the English theater of the Restoration era , using a variety of forms of stage machinery . The music is woven in in the form of four different mask games , with a series of figures representing the natural and symbolic events at the point where they occur in the plot.
The first masquerade features the second act, where the spirits of the night, of mystery, of secrecy and sleep appear and the fairy queen Titania sings to sleep after a series of elf games. The third act masquerade contains Titania's magical love for Bottom the Weber (who wears a donkey's head). An aria about the joys and torments of love is followed by a comical interlude with the peasant couple Corydon and Mopsa, where the female part was originally sung by an actor in women's clothes . The music begins in the fourth act after Titania and Oberon have reconciled after an argument.
The musical episode for the fifth act is arguably the most notable addition to Shakespeare's original version. The background for this mask game is a Chinese garden in which a man and a woman - as the oriental couple Adam and Eve - sing about the joys of their garden of Eden before humans came to destroy this beauty. Here also Juno , the queen of the gods, appears with Hymen , the god of marriage, to bless the lovers and to bring the opera to its spectacular end.
The accompaniment is set for the orchestra typical of the time - mainly for strings with the support of a continuo . In some places Purcell adds oboes, flutes and / or trumpets to vary the timbre of the instrumentation . In Purcell's day it was customary to play music while the audience took their seats in the theater. This music often consisted of two parts of folk dances and was therefore called The First Musick and The Second Musick . No curtain was lowered between the acts , instead there were other musical interludes, the so-called act tunes .
Sequence of musical numbers
according to the Zimmerman directory
- 1) 1st Music ( Prelude and Hornpipe )
- 2) 2nd Music (Air and Rondeau )
- 3) Overture (Grave and Canzona )
- 1st act
- 2nd act
- 7) Prelude and Aria, "Come all ye songsters of the sky"
- 8a) Prelude
- 8b) Trio, "May the god of wit inspire"
- 8c) echo
- 9) Chorus, "Now joyn your warbling voices all"
- 10a - b) Aria and Chorus, "Sing while we trip it on the green"
- 10c) A dance of the fairies
- 11) Prelude and Aria, "See even Night herself is here"
- 12) Aria, "I am come to lock all fast"
- 13) Prelude and Aria, "One charming night"
- 14) Aria and Chorus, "Hush, no more, be silent all"
- 15) Dance - A dance for the followers of the night
- 16) 2nd Act Tune (Air)
- 3rd act
- 17) Prelude, Aria and Chorus, "If love's a sweet passion"
- 18) Overture - Symphony while the swans come forward
- 19) Dance - Dance for the fairies
- 20) Dance - Dance for the green men
- 21) Aria, "Ye gentle spirits of the air appear"
- 22) Aria, "Now the maids and the men"
- 23) Aria, "When I have often heard"
- 24a) Dance - A dance of haymakers
- 24b) Dance - Dance for a clown
- 25) Aria and Chorus, "A thousand thousand ways we'll find"
- 26) 3rd Act Tune (Hornpipe)
- 4th act
- 27) Symphony - Sonata while the sun rises
- 28) Aria and Chorus, "Now the night is chas'd away"
- 29) Duet , "Let the fifes, and the clarions"
- 30) Entry of Phoebus
- 31) Prelude and Aria, "When a cruel long winter"
- 32) Chorus, "Hail! Great parent of us all"
- 33) Prelude and Aria, "Thus the ever grateful spring"
- 34) Prelude and Aria, "Here's the summer, sprightly, gay"
- 35) Prelude and Aria, "See my many colored fields"
- 36) Prelude and Aria, "Next, winter comes slowly"
- 37) Chorus, "Hail! Great parent of us all"
- 38) 4th Act Tune (Air)
- 5th act
- 39a) Prelude to Juno's song
- 39b - c) Aria, "Thrice happy lovers"
- 40) Aria, "O let me weep"
- 41) Dance - Entry dance
- 42) Symphony
- 43) Aria, "Thus the gloomy world at first began to shine"
- 44) Prelude, Aria and Chorus, "Thus happy and free"
- 45) Ground and Aria, "Yes, Daphne , in your looks I find"
- 46) Dance - Monkey's dance
- 47) Prelude and Aria, "Hark how all things in one sound agree"
- 48) Aria and Chorus, "Hark! Now the echoing air"
- 49) Duet and Chorus, "Sure the dull god of marriage"
- 50a) Prelude
- 50b) Aria, "See, see, I obey"
- 50c) Duet, "Turn then thine eyes"
- 50d) Aria, "My torch, indeed will from such brightness shine"
- 50e - f) Trio, "They shall be as happy"
- 51) Chaconne - Dance for the Chinese man and woman
Musical reference
In June 2013 the opera AscheMOND or The Fairy Queen by Helmut Oehring premiered at the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden . Stefanie Wördemann wrote the libretto for this work commissioned by the State Opera.
Web links
- Libretto (English)
- Libretto (bilingual, PDF) - English, German translation by Philipp Harnoncourt
- Moving reconstruction of the stage and scene by Frans & Julie Muller, 2005
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jack Westrup and F.Ll. Harrison: Collins Encyclopedia of Music , William Collins & Sons Company, London and Glasgow 1976, ISBN 0-00-434331-X . P. 199
- ↑ John Buttrey in: Henry Purcell: The Fairy Queen. Les Arts Florissants under the direction of William Christie . Harmonia Mundi , Arles, 1989
- ↑ Ulrich Amling: Helmut Oehring presents his new opera "Aschemond". First performance at the State Opera. In: Tagesspiegel . June 17, 2013, accessed September 7, 2015 .