The Fairy Queen

The dramatic plot of Henry Purcell's semi-opera Fairy Queen is based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which four young lovers search for their ideal love. But what madness is this story! Haunted by illusions, filled with allusions - like an enchantment. The whole thing is a total spectacle, festive and dazzling, though devoid of narrative verisimilitude. Purcell's music, however, is exquisitely delicate and endlessly inventive. Its function is to depict nature and its dreamlike, allegorical world, through grotesque characters and supernatural figures evoking Night, Secret, Mystery, Sleep and the four seasons, but also to convey, in parodic form, the range of amorous feelings. The solo qualities of the Vox Luminis singers will be brought to the fore, with the ensemble juggling sparkling voices such as that of soprano Gwendoline Blondeel, which resonate in the midst of shadow puppets, like visions between the material and immaterial worlds; evocative imagery developed by Belgian set designer Emilie Lauwers and Portuguese film-maker Mário Melo Costa.

Flagey, Festival Musiq3