“The Faerie Queene” by Purcell at the Moscow Philharmonic. Review

The ensemble and choir of Questa Musica, conductor Philip Chizhevsky and invited soloists performed Henry Purcell’s legendary semi-opera “The Fairy Queen” in the Tchaikovsky Hall, surpassing their own success of 2017. Tells Yulia Bederova.

Philip Chizhevsky’s vocal and instrumental ensemble Questa Musica solves theatrical problems ranging from the latest scores to hit romantic titles (usually in experimental director’s interpretations). But concert studies based on the material of baroque oratorios and operas certainly cause a resonance, as was the case with the first approach to The Fairy Queen in 2017. Not so long ago there was Dido and Aeneas with a drum kit as part of a historically informed ensemble. Her introduction, cheerfully embedded in the baroque texture, became a small homage to British stylistic tolerance, the history of which goes back more than one century, and to those manipulations with textbook texts that became the trademark of one of Chizhevsky’s co-authors on operatic works, director Konstantin Bogomolov. In the new “Fairy Queen”, let’s say right away, there was also such an insert, and it sounded dreamy and elegant in a jazz way. This short eccentricity from VIA Questa Musica was a rather delicate arrangement of the bass line of the epithalamus “Thrice Happy Lovers”, it sounded like an extended introduction to the number and the grooves, in fact, not only did not spoil it, but even improved it. Otherwise, in the smooth, elegant and smart flow of the numbers, the “furrow” of the dramatic movement would risk looking more well-worn than is typical of Purcell’s fantasy as we know it.

In the booklet introduction to the new “Queen”, which reads like a refined detective story in Purcell’s style, Sergei Khodnev reminds us once again about it, and also about the fact that the opera “The Fairy Queen” based on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is not quite an opera and not quite according to Shakespeare. Its literary basis is indeed the aforementioned play, but during the Restoration era Shakespeare in the original was not popular, but a densely rewritten, “improved Shakespeare” was in use. Moreover, the upgrade concerned both the characters and dramatic collisions, and the text itself. As for the opera, the score of The Fairy Queen belongs to that intricately hybrid genre of semi-opera, which, in essence, cannot be called a stable genre. It was customary to combine drama and music without any immutable laws, as God dictated, and he did not live long. And the works that remained from him are different in structure from each other. In The Queen, the mixture of comedy and musical numbers is arranged in such a way that the music fits into five insert masks – divertissements or “micro-operas within an opera”. The mask is another purely British genre, whose pedigree is rooted in knightly antiquity, and the material often flaunts not at all knightly nuances.

Here it is not Shakespeare’s characters who act and sing at all, but an extraneous crowd of creatures, characters and allegories (from the Drunken Poet to the Chinese, Night, Mystery, Stealth and Seasons), while the usual heroes of “The Dream”, having spoken their due lines, rest behind the scenes. It is natural that the music of Purcell’s semi-opera, since it was first lost and then found again at the beginning of the 20th century, is played either as part of a theatrical production, or as an independent concert story (the comedy is guessed, completed by the imagination in pauses), turning into metatext . All these ephemerals concerning the theoretical side of the matter fill the music in abundance – an openwork mixture of island and continental traditions, counterpoint and homophony, rebellion and ceremony, spring rhythms and subtle speech melody in chamber vocal solos accompanied by a neat continuo, in bravura dances and complex orchestral -choral episodes, here played and sung in Handel’s oratorio style, still unknown to Purcell (but closely familiar to the Questa Musica ensemble).

Chizhevsky ensured the unity of musical dramaturgy with the help of an indestructible armada of smooth rhythms – the kind that would have pleased King Charles II: by the premiere of “The Queen” he had already left this world, but managed to instill in the British stage the French dance taste. And, they say, he especially loved the kind of music where you can tap your foot to the beat, as some modern conductors do in baroque music (in the works of Rameau, for example), whose influence on the leader of the Questa Musica ensemble is undoubtedly, but not exclusively.

The rhythmic rhythm, perhaps, somewhat straightened Purcell’s routes through sleep and reality, heat and cold, outlandish and hooligan everyday worlds. But the manners, techniques and styles of the soloists-vocalists presented a Purcell-like motley picture. Here were the amazingly accurate vocals of Anastasia Bondareva in the nuances of speech, meaning, sound and emotion with Renaissance overtones in the low register and the clear lyrical sound management of Liliya Gaisina in a Mozartian key. At the other pole is the detailed, although not entirely contained in the musical material, volume of emotion and timbre in Elene Gvritishvili, a rising star of old and new music (in a duet with a solo violin, her version of “The Complaint” came close to the suicidal tone of Dido’s lament). The crystalline ironic vocal style of Sergei Godin (it’s a pity that the tenor is little involved in this music, and the tempos were so fast) and the sonorous bass of Danila Knyazev attracted attention in different ways: in the role of the Drunken Poet, he was somewhat reminiscent of the Drunken Cossack from Mazepa. Tchaikovsky, and sometimes reminded him of Boris Godunov and the magician Sarastro at once.

The concert was sold out to a full house, making one remember times of past serenity, and was in its own way serene, bright and cheerful. The only thing is that it’s a bit of a pity that Mystery, Night, Stealth – uniquely strange not only characters, but also the end-to-end intonations and colors of the score – slipped through almost unnoticed this time.