Of Queens and Fairies

Upon first hearing of Big Apple Baroque’s production of Purcell’s 1692 “The Fairy Queen”, I was not overwhelmed with enthusiasm. Little did I know! I went to witness the performance of our own dear Kala Maxym, expecting to be a bit bored with much of the rest of the evening. On the contrary, I found the entire work to be engaging and vastly entertaining with charm and laughs to spare.

The Fairy Queen is not exactly an opera but a masque; a great deal of research has gone into recreating the authenticity of the period and the work is a glorious gathering of baroque music, arias for the singers, pageant, dances and spoken dialogue, the latter credited to Shakespeare himself. It helped to be familiar with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” since the story gets a bit fragmented here and there, and interrupted by political in jokes. Had I not been otherwise engaged, I would have loved to attend the interdisciplinary conference of historians, musicologists and performers from the US and the UK. Still, I was able to find quite a bit of background on Wikipedia, too much to print here but readily available to any readers with curiosity.

It came as a surprise to me that the roles of Titania and Oberon were NOT sung but rather spoken, and to my Shakespeare-lovin’ ears, not that well spoken but glaringly amplified. This did not matter all that much since what went on with the orchestra and the singers would please any Purcell-lovin’ ears. In addition to more modern instruments, the violone, theorbo and recorder could be heard. Ms. Maxym lent her sweet soprano to the role of nymph, a charming aria involving a racy scene taking place in the hay. She reappeared after intermission singing the gorgeous duet with alto Alison Cheeseman, a duet in praise of marriage.

There was much humor to be enjoyed, particularly in the scene with “the Mechanicals” and later in the “echo scene” where voices performing the echos were scattered around Kaye Playhouse (Hunter College). It is difficult to know how a late 17th c. audience might have responded to the idea of the “Indian Boy” being Titania’s “boy toy”. Perhaps it was performed that way over 300 years ago or perhaps it was in the same category as the modernized dances performed by the Dusan Tynek Dance Theater which worked just fine in spite of their anachronistic nature.

Credit must be given to the authentic costumes designed by Carisa Kelly and props by Juliana Ross. The entire production left the audience with smiles of delight.

(c) Meche Kroop for The Opera Insider