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. At the opposite extreme from them was Sally Dexter’s Titania, flouncing and yelling in a perpetual tantrum. And of course the Mechanicals, above all the Bottom of Desmond Barrit, started over the top and never looked back: their play was a merciless 25-minute affair, without a note of music.
I could have born the histrionics better if there had been a higher proportion of Purcell but, of the four hours, he occupied only about one, and then it was often little marches. It isn’t until Act V that we get the sublime ‘O let me for ever weep!’, an extended version of Dido’s Lament, and wonderfully sung by Carolyn Sampson. Of course there is other fine music too, but, when you are waiting for it to happen to stop the flow of the tiresome spoken drama, it has to be instantly stunning to stem the irritation, and with such an intimate performance as Christie and his forces were giving it had little chance.
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