Shakespeare (and Purcell) on Love

Great art spans the centuries.  Banal statement I guess, but when one sees an example of a piece of work first created in 1594, expanded in form in 1692 and reinterpreted in 2010 and when the audience is still wildly enthusiastic, then you know it is great art.  The Fairy Queen, which was presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last week, is a 17th century semi-opera or masque based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream.  It is seldom performed because the various moving parts of this work are incredibly complicated.  First you need a complete set of actors to perform A Midsummer's Night Dream.  Then you need an orchestra with period (Baroque) instruments, vocal performers including a countertenor, and an imaginative conductor and musicologist who can translate Purcell's bare-boned score for his performers.  Apparently Purcell wrote only the notes with no indications of dynamics or tempo. In addition, the libretto for the staging of the masque was extremely complicated.  Yet when all these moving parts were put into motion at BAM, we all were treated to the roller coaster ride of love.

There were five acts to this masque.  At the beginning of each act the basic plot of MSN is presented and this adheres very closely to Shakespeare's beloved play with the four lovers lost in the fairyland and Titania, Queen of the Fairies fighting with Oberon King of the Elves.  Oberon uses magic which confuses both the four lovers and results in Titania falling in love with Bottom, the buffoonish member of the "mechanicals".  The 17th century audience, however, preferred music and dancing added to their performances so an unknown librettist and Purcell wrote set pieces which were performed at the end of each act.  These were the "masques" and they required very elaborate staging and each had a set theme: Sleep, Seduction, Seasons, Marriage. 

This performance, which also won rave reviews at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival and the Paris Opera Comique, combined traditional 17th century settings and costumes with contemporary concepts.  Greg, the purist, was not sure how he would like this presentation but the results were fantastic.  If you check out the link at the beginning you'll be rewarded with a video which highlights many of the scenes.  Sleep reminded all of us of the power of dreams as we watched dancers and heard singers through a shroud of darkness. More pictures of the Masque of Sleep cand be found in the The New York Times Review.

The interpretation of Seduction was hilarious, and I'll never be able to see a stuffed Easter bunny again without visualizing 20+ lifesize bunnies screwing on the set in time to the music. The Seasons were controlled by the Sun God, pictured above as he descends from the heavens on a golden horse.  When all the lovers were reconciled in the 5th act, they watched Bottom and his gang of "Mechanicals" (in this case Custodians) perform the most hysterical, slapstick Pyramus and Thisbe that I have ever seen.  This was followed by the "Masque of Marriage" in which a very sexy, figleafed Adam and Eve manage to morph into the most modern, vacouous, 20th century lovers complete with surfing clothes for Adam and designer shoes for Eve. 

It is hard to do justice to this work but you may want to listen to a haunting highlight from the music which summarizes all the vagaries of love:

If love's a sweet passion why does it torment?


If a bitter, oh tell me, whence comes my content?

Since I suffer with pleasure, why should I complain,

or grieve at my fate, when I know it's in vain?

Yet so pleasing the pain is so soft as the dart,

That at once it both wounds me and tickles my heart