This absurd, exuberant yet touching evening was fit for a king
Gabrieli Consort St John’s Smith Square, London SW1
What’s the perfect moment for a group of “early music” singers and players to demonstrate their impeccable European credentials? Why, during the most defiantly British of all operas, of course! Which is why on Wednesday night, at the rousing final chorus of Purcell’s King Arthur, when everyone joins to sing “St George and Britannia Triumph o’er the earth”, the singers and players of the Gabrieli Consort got out their blue flags with the gold stars and waved them like mad – with a couple of Union flags for “balance”.
Apart from that cringeworthy moment, it was a terrific evening. This absurd, yet peculiarly touching and musically radiant farrago of allegorical scenes concocted to praise Charles II has been given a complete makeover by the Consort’s director, Paul Mccreesh, and his players. They’ve scrubbed the score clean of later accretions, and gone back to a Frenchified, ever-so-slightly lilting way of playing. The trumpet player had even built his own authentic British Baroque trumpet.
More important was the fact that all nine singers (and the conductor) performed from memory, and moved about the stage to create little dramatic encounters whose meaning as always was utterly obscure, but which were amusing none the less.
The orchestra was reduced to the size of a theatre pit band. And in terms of performance, everything was light and fleet, often startlingly so. The famous scene where the genius of the Frost rises at the command of Cupid – who’s decided she prefers Charles II’S glorious Britain to the Mediterranean, even in winter – which is normally done with heavy, icy slowness, here passed by with weird, shivery swiftness.
The result was to return the piece to its rumbustious theatrical roots. Often the singers seemed more like singing actors, as in tenor James Way’s rousing Come If You Dare. The drunken folk song at the end, normally a slightly toe-curling display of caricature bumpkins, actually became convincingly uproarious. And though there were some losses – the bare lute accompaniment to the meltingly lovely aria Fairest Isle seemed a bit thin – the imagination and stylish musicality displayed by everyone more than made up for it.
The musicality was often infused by a theatrical spirit, as in the entertaining contest between the two rival gangs of spirits. But sometimes one could just sit back and enjoy Purcell’s ravishing music, as in the duet for two Sirens, sung by Anna Dennis and Mhairi Lawson with delicious tenderness.
The Gabrieli Consort’s new recording of Purcell’s King Arthur is released on Winged Lion/signum Classics
Despite the theatrical spirit, you could sometimes just sit back and enjoy Purcell’s ravisihing music