Purcell's King Arthur
- Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra
- and Chamber Choir
- Suzie LeBlanc, soprano
- Charles Daniels, tenor
- Nathaniel Watson, baritone
- R.H. Thomson, narrator
- Ivars Taurins, director
- At Trinity-St. Paul's Centre
- in Toronto on Thursday
A huge wodge of Henry Purcell's music, great genius though he undoubtedly was, can be stupefying if it isn't truly sorted. During the tercentenary of Purcell's death we had many examples from dedicated period-instrument groups who scraped away interminably at virtual catalogues of airs and dances made indistinguishable by the earnest semi-competence of their treatment.
What a relief and a joy, then, to hear Purcell's King Arthur brilliantly undertaken Thursday in a performance by conductor Ivars Taurins and the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir and Baroque Orchestra, with the bare minimum of three vocal soloists and one actor, but no dancers.
Seventeenth-century poet John Dryden called it the "dramatick opera," but this stripped down, unstaged concert was miles from a full production that originally includes Dryden's unshorn spoken dialogue, squads of dancers and actors and elaborate, fantastical stage effects.
Taurins and company, however, made Purcell's music sing and dance and fulfill the utmost potential of its beauty and variety. The sheer quantity of it was transformed into an iridescent experience of music-making. Taurins achieved this by emphasizing the singular character to be discovered in each musical number.
Purcell's King Arthur is a kind of loosely strung succession of episodes bearing not much allegiance to Dryden's original poetic structure. What remained of that structure in Thursday's concert was compressed into bits of connective tissue spoken clearly and eloquently, largely if not immaculately from memory, by actor R.H. Thomson.
The central fascination thus lay with Purcell's music itself, as unerringly exploited by Taurins and his dazzling choir, supported by the intensely involved orchestra and the excellent soloists.
The enchanting soprano Suzie LeBlanc, now a glamour queen as well as a riveting singer-actor, headed the soloists, sharing her lustre twice in duets with the lovely, poised choir soprano Michele DeBoer.
English tenor Charles Daniels demonstrated his amazingly swift staccato coloratura in the first scene of Act I, and his curious lyrical style in a heartfelt but odd account of the opera's most famous aria, Fairest Isle . In it, Daniels often fades quickly from full voice to a whispering mezza-voce, sometimes in the course of a single word. The result cannot be described as a desirable legato. Yet he remains a considerable artist.
American baritone Nathaniel Watson is a sturdy singer with a rather priestly sound and deportment, but he performed his varied assignments admirably.
The choir, however, was the miracle, whether in the luxurious Brave souls to be renown'd in story , or the chilled demeanour and hilarious "sneeze" in the Cold Chorus , or the raucous uproar of the primitive Act V jig with a rough-voiced Daniels and a rude Taurins himself swinging beer steins and vying for drunken supremacy, or just in the several subtly beautiful choruses like the Act IV Passacaglia , and the final St. George, the Patron of our Isle on a typical Purcellian ground bass. Each was clear-spoken, each vividly characterized, each radiantly but specifically sonorous. I doubt there's a better choir anywhere. Here was the Purcell wodge exquisitely sorted.
King Arthur is performed again Nov. 13th at 8 p.m. and Nov. 14th at 3:30 p.m. at Trinity-St. Paul's Centre in Toronto.