★★★☆☆ Glittering Con students put the magic into Purcell’s semi-opera.

Music Workshop, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
May 17, 2016

Regal timpani opened the symphony of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, the stage of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Music Workshop transformed into a magical forest. Purcell’s 1692 semi-opera has had a varied performance history. Composed as a series of mostly plot-less masques to be interspersed with the action of Shakespeare’s A Midsummernight’s Dream, it his been performed in conjunction with the full play as well as in concert as more of an oratorio.

The Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s production, directed by Elsie Edgerton-Till, focussed entirely on Purcell’s music, cleverly weaving broad strokes of plot into dances and mimes, to paint a vivid, magical world. The order of Purcell’s music was rearranged, Edgerton-Till assembling it into a flowing, stand-alone narrative.

^{Jeremy Dubé as Hymen}

Isabella Andronos’s set was economical: two armchairs against a backdrop of stylised forest, while her florrid costumes dripped with glitter (except for the humans, who wore jeans). The students’ singing was generally excellent, though diction varied across the cast. Baritone Tristan Entwistle stole the show as the Drunk Poet, hamming up the...