Pucell's magical Fairy Queen has opened at Glyndebourne in a production that has choreography by Kim Brandstrup. This review in today's Independent is highly appreciative:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 15672.html

Purcell conducted by William Christie is my idea of heaven, I shall make my way to Glyndebourne anon and report back with my own findings, just keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't rain for me, though with Wimbledon and Glastonbury in full swing the chances are it's going to p*** down.

Well, the sun shone after all, the sheep bleated in the intervals and the Sussex downs looked beautiful in the evening sunshine at what is the very best opera venue in England.

The Fairy Queen is a play and opera combined, a version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream together with the glorious incidental music by Purcell and is more accurately a masque rather than an opera. The production is sumptuous and must have cost a fortune but the incomparable William Christie was conducting transporting me to baroque paradise.

There were quite a few opportunities for dancing in this production and Kim Brandstrup was kept busy with movement for the actors through to ensembles choreographed in his own personal style. Here and there he was looking back to the period in which the work was first performed but mostly he was engaged in coming up with ideas to match director Jonathan Kent's fertile imagination.

The following review comes up with this:



http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 549914.ece

The rabbits were both sublime and ridiculous; giant grinning cuddly Easter bunnies shagging away frantically to Purcell in every sexual permutation imaginable. I honestly don't think I've ever seen anything so funny on a stage in my entire life.

Tickets are like gold dust, but there will be a semi staged version at the Albert Hall next month at a fraction of the Glyndebourne prices. I shall be going of course, but whether they see fit to take those naughty bunnies along remains to be seen.