Henry Purcell's incidental music for the stage, The Fairy Queen, was written and premièred in London for the composer's contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare's dramatic work A Midsummer Night's Dream. Contemporaries later used the term 'semi-opera' to describe this quintessentially English genre, which is primarily associated with Purcell, and in which a prose stage play is combined with (purely instrumental, or else singing accompanied by instruments) incidental music to such a degree that the music and prose exist in a kind of balance. Following on the heels of 1690's Dioclesian and 1691's King Arthur, this was Purcell's third effort in the genre. Although no proof exists that he ever set any of Shakespeare's original lines to music, it is nevertheless on the pages of the Fairy Queen where England's greatest poetic and musical geniuses come closest to each other. This masterpiece was first played on a Hungarian stage with period instruments almost precisely seven years ago, on 3 February 2009, in a production by Csaba Káel in this same auditorium. Tonight, however, is only about the music, and we will be performing Purcell’s phenomenal score in its entirety.
The composer died three years after the work was completed: on 21 November 1695 – Saint Cecilia's Eve. At the time of his death, nearly every major contemporary eulogised him as England's greatest composer of music, dubbing him the 'Orpheus Britannicus'. It is worth quoting the words, dating from 1726, of the enthusiastic amateur musician Roger North, who had known Purcell much earlier: '[Purcell] had just begun to unpack his great art, before everything could be made Italian, and while he was pursuing this aim, he died, but no musical talent greater than him has ever been born in England.' (György Vashegyi)

Sponsored by: National Cultural Fund of Hungary, Ministry of Human Capacities, Budavár Local Government, fidelio.hu

Presented by: Sysart Ltd. Orfeo Music Foundation