Taking time out from L’Ormindo, their current collaboration with the Royal Opera at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Christian Curnyn and his Early Opera Company returned to the Wigmore for a single performance of King Arthur as part of the Hall’s Purcell retrospective. First performed in 1691, the work is a sequence of songs and masques combined with a predominantly spoken drama, in this case by ex-poet laureate John Dryden.
The text aimed to bolster the Stuart dynasty by comparing its achievements to those of Arthurian Britain. It was one of Purcell’s biggest hits in his lifetime, and also went some way to restoring Dryden to favour with Protestant William III, who had sacked him for converting to Catholicism under James II.
Curnyn and the EOC performed it without dialogue, and on a small-ish scale, which contributed to the night’s strengths and weaknesses. We could have done with a larger number of strings than a single player to each line, though the resulting sparseness also spoke volumes in the famous set-piece in which Cupid thaws out the Cold Genius of the British landscape and turns the country into a raunchy pleasure palace. Directing from the harpsichord, Curnyn balanced the erotic with the political. It was beautifully played.
Six singers shared out the songs and doubled as chorus. Sopranos Joélle Harvey and Mhairi Lawson duetted ravishingly as sirens out to waylay the unsuspecting Arthur. The tenors were Samuel Boden, mercurial and humane, and Nick Pritchard, lofty and more serious: George Humphreys and Oliver Hunt were their handsome-sounding bass counterparts, with Humphreys’ wit offsetting Hunt’s hauteur. The whole thing was a classy entertainment, and hugely enjoyable.
