Purcell opus lets singers stand out
Early-music aficionados in the Bay Area have such a bounty spread before us that it’s easy to become complacent about the state of the field. But of course all those stylistically attuned vocalists and instrumentalists have to come from somewhere, and they have to be trained in the niceties of their assignments.
One important source of that training is the American Bach Soloists’ annual Festival and Academy, which every August gathers up young artists from around the world and offers them an intensive musical boot camp under some of the leading early-music practitioners of our day.
And the results are impressive, to judge from Thursday
night’s expressive and finely wrought performance of Purcell’s dramatic opus “King Arthur,” led by artistic director Jeffrey Thomas. The performance (the first of two on successive nights) marked a sort of climax to the week’s festivities, which conclude on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 13, with the traditional valedictory rendition of Bach’s B-Minor Mass.
For showing off the abilities of a large collection of Baroque singers, you could hardly do better than Purcell’s 1691 opus, which teems with dozens of short vocal numbers that can be assigned more or less at will. More often, “King Arthur” is presented by a small group of solo singers, each undertaking a larger share of the work, but there’s no reason it can’t be transformed into a sort of extended pageant of vocal talent.
That’s because of the essentially episodic nature of the work, which in turn has to do with the odd and unwieldy English genre known as the “semi-opera.” Unlike the dramatically taut and completely sung “Dido and Aeneas” for which the composer is best remembered today, the semi-opera (Purcell wrote several) was a distended hybrid of spoken stage play, choral and solo singing, and dance interludes.
All indications are that a full performance of “King Arthur,” with the poet John Dryden’s jingoistic theatrical celebration of England’s glorious beginnings at Camelot, would run something like five hours and put modern audiences to sleep. Mark Morris’ exuberant dance version, which Cal Performances presented in 2006, simply jettisoned the story and grafted the score onto an evening of nonnarrative high jinks.
On Thursday, Hugh Davies was on hand not to sing but to read in witty, plummy tones a dramatic precis (by Laurence Senelick and Robert Pinsky) in between the musical numbers. That was all the infrastructure the performance needed to sustain interest in the handiwork of the musicians.
And the large array of singers, who all served as a chorus when not taking solo turns, repaid the investment. With Purcell’s invention ranging from the sensuous to the raucous, and from the noble to the starkly comic, there was something here for everyone.
Any list of highlights would have to include the duet between the so-called Cold Genius — a mysterious spirit who reigns in the frozen north and shivers with every note he sings — and Cupid, who warms him and his frostbitten minions with the power of love. The roles were ably sung by bass William Meinert and soprano Michele Elizabeth Kennedy, whose graceful tonal clarity was a wonder to hear.
Other standouts included soprano Amanda Keenan, who sang vibrantly as a Saxon priestess and in a number of other segments; tenor Jacques-Olivier Chartier, who brought expressive stateliness to a shepherd’s celebration of the pastoral life; sopranos Ju Hyeon Han and Victoria Fraser as two seductive sirens who try to lure Arthur astray; and soprano Katelyn G. Aungst, who concluded the evening by bestowing Venus’ sumptuous favor on England in perpetuity. Clearly, no one told her about Brexit.