SOME OPERAS can sustain interest as a concert performance but Purcell's The Fairy Queen felt incomplete without the over-the-top scenery, visual effects and dance interludes it was written for.
Although it is loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the opera tends to focus on the more fantastical elements of the story, sung by a string of minor characters that rarely reappear.
The Sixteen choir and period instrument orchestra, plus guest soloists conducted by Harry Christophers, did their best to liven up the action. Bass Jonathan Best gave a comic performance as the Drunken Poet pinched by fairies, and then camped it up with lip-sticked alto Iestyn Davies playing the coy Mopsa. There were also consummate performances from the soloists from The Sixteen and soprano Gillian Keith, particularly in the plaint O let me weep, simply accompanied by violin, harp and vihuela. However, despite the groundbreaking nature of some of Purcell's music, many of the interludes cried out for spectacle.
