Prom 24: Vividness & virtuosity in an astonishing danced staging of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Les Arts Florissants & Mourad Merzouki’s Companie Käfig,

Purcell: The Fairy Queen; Les Arts Florissants, singers from Le Jardin des Voix, dancers from Companie Käfig – BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou)

Purcell: The Fairy Queen; Les Arts Florissants, singers from Le Jardin des Voix, dancers from Companie Käfig, director: Mourad Merzouki, conductor Paul Agnew; BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall

Merzouki’s staging showcased the astonishing virtuosity of his dancers and the engaging way singers and dancers combined, conveying their sheer enjoyment of the music

Everyone has their own idea about what to with Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. Containing some of his finest theatre music, the work as originally performed, with nearly two hours of sub-par spoken dialogue, does not appeal to regular theatre going, though I think to hear and see The Fairy Queen in a production that recreated the effects of the original would be revelatory. For most dramatic performances, Purcell’s music is taken on its own with a new storyline, though frankly, I think Benjamin Britten had the right of it, cutting and reshaping the music into a more satisfactory whole.

On 6 August 2024, Purcell’s The Fairy Queen was presented at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms in a semi-staging by choreographer Mourad Merzouki which was a collaboration between Les Arts Florissants and Merzouki’s Companie Käfig. Paul Agnew conducted Les Arts Florissants with singers from their young artist scheme, Le Jardin des Voix, Paulina Francisco, Georgia Burashko, Rebecca Leggett, Juliette Mey, Ilja Aksionov, Rodrigo Carreto, Hugo Herman-Wilson and Benjamin Schiilperoort, and eight dancers from Companie Käfig, Baptiste Coppin, Samuel Florimond, Anahi Passi, Alary-Youra Ravin, Daniel Saad and Timothée Zig.

Purcell: The Fairy Queen; Les Arts Florissants, singers from Le Jardin des Voix, dancers from Companie Käfig – BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou)

The 29-strong instrumental ensemble, led by Augusta McKay Lodge, was pushed to the rear of the stage with the front area being taken over by the staging. Costumes by Claire Schirck were uniform, black suits and white shirts in the first half, with coloured shirts in the second half, and lighting by Fabrice Sarcy brought out the theatrical nature of the undertaking.

Merzouki used the singers and dancers as a single ensemble, getting the singers to move and thus creating the sense of a community presenting this music. There was no plot, as such, numbers were staged, flowed into each other and we relied very much on the personalities of the performers. This approach worked well in the first half, where the music is more structured with the drunken poet and the long masque of night. In the second half, things were more diffuse, the masque of the seasons seemed to lose sight of the dramaturgy and of course the final sequence is simply and excuse for some lovely singing.

But what most people will have taken away from the performance was the astonishing dancing. Merzouki’s choreography and the bravura performances by the dancers were top dead centre in the staging. If you did not find hip-hop inspired dance performed to Purcell’s music inspiring and engaging, then you missed something.

Purcell: The Fairy Queen; Les Arts Florissants, singers from Le Jardin des Voix, dancers from Companie Käfig – BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou)

Musically, the performance suffered somewhat in the Royal Albert Hall acoustic. Banished to the rear of the stage, and using speeds that were probably geared to a smaller venue, there were times when Purcell’s detailed writing rather skittered by without registering properly. The eight singers were admirable, a variety of nationalities all coming together to perform Purcell in English and doing so with a great deal of style (Sophie Daneman was the language coach). Words were sometimes at a premium, but given the hall what was achieved was impressive. There were no countertenors, Ilja Aksionov and Rodrigo Carreto sang some numbers as high tenors, but the women in the ensemble were very much a focus. No information was provided as to whether the work was performed at the low pitch that Purcell would have known.

With eight young voices, not everyone managed to register everything quite as strongly as was needed, and it took time for your ears to settle and for the performance to draw you in. The quiet moments were often the most successful, the masque of night was completely ravishing, and the performances by Aksionov and Carreto were, for me, some of the highlights of the evening. Soloists from the orchestra were brought forward to engage with the dancers, the two recorder players for the birds of the air, and leader Augusta McKay Lodge, in The Plaint, which drew in another level of integration between music, singing and dance.

The two comic sequences stood out, simply because they are more structured dramatically. So that Hugo Herman-Wilson was a vividly drunken poet, and returned with Aksionov for the delightful Corydon and Mopsa duet. 

Purcell: The Fairy Queen; Les Arts Florissants, singers from Le Jardin des Voix, dancers from Companie Käfig – BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou)

But dance was ubiquitous, not only in the dance numbers but everywhere else. The six dancers each seemed to have their own particular style, yet it was a couple of the men who routinely astonished with their hip-hop style moves and remarkable speed. It was highly engaging, and though the singers and dancers had clear enjoyment in their interaction, there were moments when you felt Merzouki pulled focus, giving us dazzling dancing when the singing should have been important. In the end, you had to enjoy this as a dance piece, yet one where dance and singing were integrated.

I missed the stateliness and structure of more formal dance in music such as the final chaconne, though it was impressive the way the whole company, singers and dancers, joined together as a dance ensemble, and then in the final celebratory chorus, the dancers sang with the singers.

Purcell: The Fairy Queen; Les Arts Florissants, singers from Le Jardin des Voix, dancers from Companie Käfig – BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou)

I am not sure that the Royal Albert Hall was necessarily the best place to present this staging, but certainly the sheer vividness and virtuosity of the dancers captivated the audience, and who could not respond when faced with such engaging bravura and eager enjoyment, though you felt that perhaps Purcell’s music was taking second place to the dance.

The radio broadcast is available for two months on BBC Sounds, though frankly you had to be there and it is a shame that this was not one of the televised BBC Proms.