The acclaimed Vox Luminis early music ensemble leads a semi-staged concerto version of the magical semi-opera by Henry Purcell, which is inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare, on 15 November at the Teatro Real.
The English Baroque composer Henry Purcell created this Baroque semi-opera in 1692, in which the music is full of romantic entanglements, transformations and supernatural mischievousness. The story tells how two couples of human lovers escape to the forest to live out their love in secret. Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the fairies, also live in the forest but they are fighting due to jealousy.
Oberon plans a prank: he orders his servant Puck to use a magic flower to make Titania fall in love with the first being she sees when she wakes up... who turns out to be a craftsman with a donkey's head. He also tries to sort out the lovers' mess, but Puck's magic confuses them even more.
The show is conducted by Lionel Meunier, a musician, orchestra conductor and singer born in Clamecy (France) in1981. In 2004, he founded Vox Luminis, whose repertoire is mainly in Italian, English and German and ranges from the 16th to the 18th centuries. On average, the band releases two albums a year and gives more than 60 concerts on stages all over the world.
It currently has 14 recordings and has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Gramophone Music Award 2012 for best album of the year for Musicalische Exequien by Heinrich Schütz, the BBC Music Magazine Award 2018 in the Choral Award Winner category for Luther et la Musique de la Réforme and the Gramophone Music Award in the choir section for Buxtehude: Abendmusiken.
Artistic File:
- Music Conductor - Lionel Meunier
- Stage Design Concept - Emile Laywers
- Stage Design and Lighting - David Carney
- Video Production - Mário Melo Costa
- Playwright - Isaline Claeys
Cast:
- Sopranos - Viola Blache, Gwendoline Blondeel, Erika Tandiono, Carinne Tinney, Stefanie True and Zsuzsi Tóth
- Contraltos - Jan Kullmann and Vojtech Semerád
- Tenors - Kieran White and Rory Carver
- Counter-tenors - Jan Kullmann and Vojtech Semerád
- Bass - Marcus Farnworth, Lóránt Najbauer and Sebastian Myrus
- Orchestra - Vox Luminis
Programme:
Semi-opera in five acts
- Music - Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
- Libretto - John Dryden, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600) by William Shakespeare
- Opera in semi-staged concerto version
