King Arthur: A Dramatick Opera, and: King Arthur, and: King Arthur, and: King Arthur (review)

Fans of Mark Morris and his dancers were delighted with the production of Purcell’s King Arthur presented in March by the New York City Opera. Admirers of Purcell were equally delighted by the quality of the singers and musicians under the baton of Jane Glover. Anyone interested in Dryden’s libretto or the legend of King Arthur was far less likely to share in the enthusiasm.

Part of the fascination of the Arthurian legend is its susceptibility to change, to morph into different forms to suit the tastes of an age or the agendas of either the powerful or the paranoid. Dryden, however, may well be responsible for one of the more peculiar interventions in this history of mutability. His libretto is set appropriately enough in the time of the wars between the Britons and the Saxons. Dryden, however, invents a rivalry that is amorous as well as martial, as Arthur falls in love with Emmeline, the daughter of the Saxon invader, Oswald. The simple story is embellished with the kinds of fancies typical of the masques of the seventeenth century: the feats of Merlin and the peculiar sprite Philadel; the notorious naked rompings of the water nymphs; the dangers of the Frost Giants; pastoral celebrations; and a happy ending with Arthur united to his beloved Emmeline, a sort of Sovereignty of Britain figure without the distracting and complicated history of a Guinevere, whose erasure in this case is total.

Mark Morris’s response to Dryden’s bizarre Arthuriana is to discard it all. If Purcell survives this production, Dryden and Arthur do not. Dryden’s plot is replaced by what Morris describes as a pageant, and Arthur is reduced to a large, spiky crown that finds itself in various irrelevant positions on stage. Of all Arthurian interventions, Morris has accomplished Arthur Degree Zero, a King Arthur without Arthur. The tunes remain and were interpreted by a fine cast of singers and a number of dancers in intricate and colorful Isaac Mizrahi underwear. The nymphs in an explosion of Victorian lingerie, the shepherds celebrating British wool, and the always-enchanting Scottish soprano Mhairi Lawson provided memorable moments, but the production as a whole was of minor interest. For Arthurians, the value of this production is virtually nil, except for the poignant opportunity to witness Arthur’s disappearance from his own text.

While the opportunity to see Morris’s production has passed, two excellent recordings of Purcell are relatively easily available. William Christie directs a production that premiered at the Theatre du Chatelet, a co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Theatre de Caen. The concert version directed by John Eliot Gardiner is also fine and retains Dryden’s pre-Industrial ad campaign for British wool. Finally, the DVD of the Salzburger Festspiel production of King Arthur provides access to a live performance of the opera, which retains Dryden’s plot. The show is lively and inventive but does not pretend to be a re-creation of the seventeenth-century original. It has its quirks and oddities but is the only easily available version of a production of Purcell’s King Arthur.