The Fairy Queen
The Proms
Gluck double bill
Wigmore Hall
Purcell’s The Fairy Queen has been a big success at Glyndebourne this year, in a production by Jonathan Kent, and with William Christie conducting. I decided to wait till it came to the Proms, where it was presumably a very different experience. In the Royal Albert Hall you’re almost bound to be so far away from the singers that you have to look at their mouths to see which one is performing, especially if, as here, all the sopranos seemed, for much of the time, to be emulating the bird-like tones of Emma Kirkby. Nor was any of the scenery brought from Glyndebourne, and this is supposed to be a visual as much as an aural feast. Perhaps in an attempt to compensate, the actors rampaged around the stage, shouting and desperately gesticulating, with the exception of the gracefully understated Oberon of Joseph Millson and the swallow-like Puck of Jotham Annan.
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