Henry Purcell, King Arthur (1691)

Well, here is this, from the same people who did that Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse.  There are a number of productions of this, but none that play it straight.  It seems that everybody like Purcell and nobody like John Dryden.  I must admit, I've never read him; I just have an irrational prejudice against him because he has "dry" in his name.  He must be hella boring!  Or not.  Hard to say.

Well, the music, we are told, is unrelated to the spoken text, as was the case with these things.  And the new version...still isn't any kind of coherent story, really.  The imagery is obviously Monty-Python-inspired--is there any way that a contemporary staging of this wouldn't be?  The character of King Arthur actually sings, which is not how it originally would have been.  The action, such as it is, moves from haunted forest to ice field to royal court.  There's also a big thing where ol' Dino--of Shirley and--plays a stagehand trying to set things up and making noise and getting in the way.  There are a few vaudeville-ish musical bits unrelated to Purcell.  As in Don Quichotte, conductor Hervé Niquet talks to the audience a bunch and even sings (he's not trying to be operatic or particularly amazing or anything, but he got his start as a tenor with Les Arts florissants back in the day, so presumably he could if he wanted to).  Probably the best way to characterize this would be as an Entertainment.

You've gotta love Purcell's inventive music; that goes without saying.  Or maybe it doesn't.  But whatever the case, I thought it was stronger than The Indian Queen, musically.  The non-musical aspects...well, I thought they were mostly fine.  They did occasionally go on a bit; I would not have objected to the whole thing maybe twenty minutes shorter.  But hey, mostly it's harmless fun.  Am I a vile hypocrite for objecting to the way Peter Sellars dealt with The Indian Queen while liking this?  Am I really going to say, oh, this one is okay because it's not trying to make a point; it's just goofing around?  Isn't that like the South Park ethos that I so deplore, where the ultimate sin is, like, caring too much about stuff?  Look.  I have no answers for you.  But if consistency means I have to condemn this, I am content to be inconsistent.  The.  End.