Les Arts Florissants · Le Jardin des Voix

Paulina Francisco, soprano | Georgia Burashko, mezzo-soprano | Rebecca Leggett, mezzo-soprano | Juliette Mey, mezzo-soprano | Ilja Aksionov, tenor | Rodrigo Carreto, tenor | Hugo Herman-Wilson, baritone | Benjamin Schilperoort, bass-baritone

Compagnie Käfig dancers

Mourad Merzouki, stage direction and choreography

William Christie, direction

PROGRAMME 

Henry Purcell: The Fairy Queen, Z629. Semi-opera with a prologue in five acts with an anonymous libretto based on William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Semi-staged version

In an enchanted forest, reality is mixed with dreams, illusion and the supernatural, with criss-crossing paths and romantic intrigues of young Athenians, forest fairies... and a group of actors. A free adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Fairy Queen is Henry Purcell's third semi-opera, a specifically English 17th-century genre that emerged after the Restoration and before Italian opera took hold on the English stage. The semi-opera combines a text narration with a series of masquerades related to each other, with characters who sing and dance.