Restoration Company
Incidental Love and Death
November/December 2011
from the series: ‘Theater Music: Dramatick Song and Dance’
Program:
| Pre-concert: | Wind chamber-music in foyer |
| Purcell: | Masque from Timon of Athens (Bacchus and Cupid) |
| Purcell: | Instrumental + Dance suite + 3 songs from Amphitryon |
| Purcell: | Druids' Scene from Bonduca |
| Interval: | Keyboard suite in the auditorium, String chamber music in foyer |
| Purcell: | Sacrifice Scene + Magicians' Dance uit Circe |
| Purcell: | Instrumental + Dance suite uit Abdelazer |
| Purcell: | Fame Scene uit Indian Queen |
| Purcell: | "Triumph, Victorious Love" uit Dioclesian |
| Post-concert: | Catches and (bawdy) songs in bar |
| Forces: | SATB, 4 dancers, 4 strings, 4 winds, keyboards, theorbo, director (19) |
“... All this whilst the Play-house Musick improved yearly, and is now arrived to greater perfection than ever I knew it …”
(An ‘old play-goer’, looking back on 1660-90
One of the earliest measures Charles II took on assuming the English throne in 1660 was to reopen, license and fund the London theatre scene, largely silenced for the previous two decades by civil war and Cromwell's puritan Commonwealth. Not only was this an opportunity to resurrect the dormant tradition of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher: the new King’s enthusiasm for lively music helped promote the emergence of a new sort of theatre experience, where instrumental music, dance, and solo and ensemble song were added to the plays – sometimes loosely woven into the storyline, but often simply as “incidental” music to entertain on another level.
Theatre-lovers often went to the same production several nights in a single week to hear their favourite singers, watch the elaborate dancing, be amazed by the rapid, complicated scene-changes and flying "machines", keep abreast of court and city gossip, flirt (and more), or simply be seen in impressive company. It was a lively evening of varied entertainment and social interaction - one where the progress of the play itself was often of secondary importance.
Restoration Company takes a modern audience part of the way back to those colourful nights with a dynamic mix of solo and ensemble theatrical singing, instrumental music, and baroque solo and ensemble dance numbers (but without the 3-hour play, alas...). Dramatick Song and Dance is an early-music concert experience with fringe-benefits: as well as the core entertainment, we present chamber music before, and irreverent catches and wicked songs in the bar after the show.