The songs and instrumental dance pieces on this German release come from a genre that has probably suffered historically from being saddled with the clunky name of semi-opera. The semi-opera was a spoken play with song-and-dance extravaganzas related to the masque genre. Henry Purcell was closely associated with the semi-opera, and there are various gems scattered around his output in the genre even though it's hard to bring an entire work to life. (It would be worth reconstructing one of these evening's entertainments in ...
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The songs and instrumental dance pieces on this German release come from a genre that has probably suffered historically from being saddled with the clunky name of semi-opera. The semi-opera was a spoken play with song-and-dance extravaganzas related to the masque genre. Henry Purcell was closely associated with the semi-opera, and there are various gems scattered around his output in the genre even though it's hard to bring an entire work to life. (It would be worth reconstructing one of these evening's entertainments in full.) Here, the Lautten Compagney Berlin and its director Wolfgang Katschner take some chances in an attempt to restore to the music what necessarily excerpted performances leave out. The music comes from four semi-operas, Timon of Athens, The History of Dioclesian, King Arthur, and The Fairy Queen, mixed slightly together but no more so than might have been done in a theater of the time. The recording is well worth hearing even if not to everybody's taste. Basically, Katschner...
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