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Article: `Fairy Queen': Top-Flight Sprite
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- January 29, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Henry Purcell's age, around the end of the 17th century, was one
of glittering decadence in English musical theater. So it is
misleading to call his "The Fairy Queen" an opera, though that is how
it has usuallybeen classified. It is, instead, incidental music
to a drastically revised and spectacularly staged revival of
Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," presented at the Theatre
Royal in London in 1692 and adorned by added -- essentially
irrelevant -- fairy masques in each of its five acts.
Do not look for a lot of thematic continuity or coherence among
the 60 songs, vocal ensembles, overtures, dances and choruses in the
newest recording of this music (EMI 55234, two CDs with ...