Toronto Summer Music/Les Arts Florissants: The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell (librettist unknown), conducted by William Christie, stage direction and choreography by Mourad Merzouki, featuring Soloists of Le Jardin des Voix 2023 and dancers of Compagnie Kafig, Koerner Hall, July 11.
The legendary William Christie and his Les Arts Florissants have created A Fairy Queen for the 21st century.
Take a 332-year-old music score, namely Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (1692), and add in stage direction and choreography by French hip-hop theatre guru Mourad Merzouki, performed to the baroque period instruments of L’Orchestre des Arts Florissants, and sung by the young soloists of Le Jardin des Voix, and you have a recipe where singers dance and dancers sing in a captivating performance that crosses centuries.
The two components of this eccentric but enthralling Fairy Queen, baroque music and hip-hop, are represented by the top drawer of their craft.
The iconic Christie is among the gods of the 20th century baroque music revival, having founded the formidable Les Arts Florissants, an ensemble of instrumentalists and singers, in 1979. The American-born conductor and harpsichordist came to France in 1971 in protest against the draft and the Viet Nam war. His company is based in Caen.
Acclaimed Algerian-French choreographer Merzouki and his Compagnie Kafig reside in Lyon. Since 1995, his breakthrough hip-hop theatre tells stories or explores themes using street dance fusion. He has literally been a pioneer in bringing the genre into the mainstream, as well as experimenting in linking hip-hop with other performing art forms such as contemporary dance, ballet, circus, martial arts, et cetera. The Fairy Queen is Merzouki’s first foray into choreographing for opera.
It’s important to make something perfectly clear. Purcell’s Fairy Queen is completely unrelated to Edmund Spenser’s epic poem, The Faerie Queene (1596). Rather, the well-spring of Purcell’s semi-opera is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, apparently written to celebrate the 15th wedding anniversary of the English monarchs, William and Mary.
And this is the problem facing anyone mounting Purcell’s magnum opus.
The Fairy Queen is theatre music, designed to accompany the entirety of Shakespeare’s play. Purcell’s musical contribution was the creation of masques or divertissements that were performed between the acts. Someone actually figured out that to recreate the original production, play and music, would take over four hours of performance time.
Thus, convention has developed that Purcell’s magnificent music is performed alone, but, therein lies the rub. Without Shakespeare’s play, you have a series of unrelated scenes, as the original masques were linked in content to the acts of the play, but metaphorically so. For example, the masque following Titania falling in love with Bottom and his donkey head, contained various songs about love, both happy and sad.
In a concert version of Purcell’s complete score, there is no problem. No interconnection between the musical numbers is necessary. If, however, you are going to stage Purcell’s music, a link must be found between the masques, a cohesion of lyrics and action, as it were. As Christie explains in his program notes, the problem was solved by celebrating Purcell’s music in its own right, with Shakespeare’s play as a shadow.
The overriding vision of The Fairy Queen would seem to be a group of young people escaping the real world to experience the enchanted magic of the forest at night where the fairies are at play. One of the first musical numbers of the score is the duet of two lovers, “Come Let Us Leave the Town”, and so they do. The following “acts” focus on the delights of night, all matters of love, a celebration of nature, and finally, the arrival of dawn and metaphysical rebirth.
What is remarkable is that it all works, thanks to Merzouki’s stage direction and choreography which ties everything together. It also helps that both the eight singers and seven dancers are dressed in identical black suits by designer Claire Schirck. When they shed their jackets, they are all wearing shirts with white fronts and differently coloured sleeves and backs.
In fact, I can’t recall a better integration of song and dance than in this Fairy Queen. The performers are all mixed together somehow, with the dancers performing amid the singers, as it were, and the singers reacting to the dancers. Sometimes they all dance together executing some very vigorous movement.
The complete marvel is how the showy hip-hop tricks work within the context of the piece because they represent the exuberance of youth. Head stands, body twists, mid-air twirls come hurtling across the stage in astonishing fashion. On the other hand, in more quiet moments, the movement is quite balletic, with graceful arm swoops and gentle turns.
In other words, the ensemble takes us on a journey, because they are all on the adventure together. There is always something happening on stage in a beautifully integrated mosaic of song and dance. This interpretation is rich in drama and emotion, offset by moments of unrestrained joy and heartrending sorrow.
The very talented singers are the 2023 class of Le Jardin des Voix, co-directed by Christie and English tenor/conductor Paul Agnew. Every two years, from literally thousands of applicants from all over the world, eight or so singers are chosen to undergo an intensive training course in baroque singing, which culminates in a performance that tours the world. This group is the eleventh edition.
As for the dancers, Toronto audiences are familiar with Merzouki’s Compagnie Kafig, which has toured here on several occasions. Those performances, however, were raw and edgy, and spoke of representing defiant outliers and mean streets. Rather, in the Fairy Queen choreography, the dazzling hip-hop tricks have a refinement about them. For this performance, the Compagnie Kafig dancers show polish and class. They belong up there with a group of cultured opera singers.
Needless to say, Les Arts Florissants orchestra was magnificent, but one would expect nothing less. Sometimes they had to conduct themselves as Christie turned to watch the ensemble, beaming like everyone’s favourite uncle.
Two scenes deserve special mention among this embarrassment of riches.
Perhaps the most poignant moment of the performance was mezzo-soprano Juliette Mey’s sorrowful rendering of Le Plaint, “Oh Let Me Weep”, about a lost love, accompanied with tremendous sympathy by first violin, Emmanuel Resche-Caserta. The chemistry between them was palpable.
From a humour point of view, the duet with baritone Hugo Herman-Wilson and tenor Ilja Aksionov (in drag) was laugh out loud. They represented the rustics, or the haymakers (as they are called in the program), the former wanting a kiss and a cuddle, and the woman saying no, no, no.
And let’s end with some trivia.
The Fairy Queen debuted in August, 2023 at Festival dans les Jardins de William Christie. That’s correct. Christie, apparently, has over the years cultivated a magnificent garden, and hosts a festival every August at his home in Thiré, in the Vendée region, pays de la Loire.
I think that’s worth a visit, don’t you?
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