Questa Musica and Philip Chizhevsky will perform Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen”
On September 27, at the Tchaikovsky Hall, Philip Chizhevsky, the Questa Musica ensemble and a team of soloists will present the famous masterpiece of Henry Purcell to the public. Several years ago, for the first time in Russia, musicians performed all the music of “The Fairy Queen” on historical instruments. Today, Philip Chizhevsky and Questa Musica are one of the leaders of authentic performance in our country, and their current appeal to Purcell promises new discoveries. The work, created in the semi-opera genre, introduces the public to the unique tradition of English musical theater of the 17th century.
The Fairy Queen was written in 1692, based on A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, the composer did not set a single Shakespeare text to music; episodes metaphorically connected to the plot formed independent islands within each act. Just as the play freely combined lyricism, fantasy and comedy, in Purcell's seven-opera a drunken poet and an allegory of Night are bizarrely juxtaposed, the seasons tell about themselves in arias, the Chinese sing about the joys of life, and monkeys dance like people.
For a long time, the score of The Fairy Queen was considered lost and was only rediscovered at the beginning of the twentieth century; Today the revived semi-opera is performed more often on the concert stage. “Savoring the subtleties of the musical texture, the conductor finds the essence of Purcell’s style: a unique combination of explosive activity and slow flow, catchy, slightly rough pressure and aristocratic sophistication,” the press wrote after the Russian premiere of The Fairy Queen. And if its performance in the traditions of the 17th century is now in doubt, the exceptional merits of Purcell’s music are undeniable.
