Daniel Purcell the Judgment of Paris

Daniel Purcell The Judgment of Paris Anna Dennis • Amy Freston • Ciara Hendrick • Samuel Boden • Ashley Riches Rodolfus Choir • Spiritato! • Julian Perkins RES10128 Daniel Purcell (c.1664-1717) 1. Symphony [5:40] The Judgment of Paris 2. Mercury: From High Olympus and the Realms Above [4:26] 3. Paris: Symphony for Hoboys to Paris [2:31] 4. Paris: Wherefore dost thou seek [1:26] Venus – Goddess of Love Anna Dennis 5. Mercury: Symphony for Violins (This Radiant fruit behold) [2:12] Amy Freston Pallas – Goddess of War 6. Symphony for Paris [1:46] Ciara Hendricks Juno – Goddess of Marriage Samuel Boden Paris – a shepherd 7. Paris: O Ravishing Delight – Help me Hermes [5:33] Ashley Riches Mercury – Messenger of the Gods 8. Mercury: Symphony for Violins (Fear not Mortal) [2:39] Rodolfus Choir 9. Mercury, Paris & Chorus: Happy thou of Human Race [1:36] Spiritato! 10. Symphony for Juno – Saturnia, Wife of Thundering Jove [2:14] Julian Perkins director 11. Trumpet Sonata for Pallas [2:45] 12. Pallas: This way Mortal, bend thy Eyes [1:49] 13. Venus: Symphony of Fluts for Venus [4:12] 14. Venus, Pallas & Juno: Hither turn thee gentle Swain [1:09] 15. Symphony of all [1:38] 16. Paris: Distracted I turn [1:51] 17. Juno: Symphony for Violins for Juno [1:40] (Let Ambition fire thy Mind) 18. Juno: Let not Toyls of Empire fright [2:17] 19. Chorus: Let Ambition fire thy Mind [0:49] 20. Pallas: Awake, awake! [1:51] 21. Trumpet Flourish – Hark! Hark! The Glorious Voice of War [2:32] 22. Trumpet Sonata [2:41] 23. Pallas: O what Joys does Conquest yield [2:29] 24. Chorus: O how Glorious [0:55] 25. Venus: Stay lovely Youth, delay thy Choice [3:12] 26. Venus: Far from thee be anxious Care [0:59] 27. Venus & Chorus: One only Joy Mankind can know [2:07] 28. Venus: Nature fram'd thee sure for Loving [3:36] 29. Venus: Gentle Shepherd [2:10] 30. Paris: I yield, I yield [5:13] 31. Grand Chorus [2:32] Daniel Purcell by John Closterman (1660-1711) Total playing time [78:46] Daniel Purcell: The Judgment of Paris with music by several minor composers) spectacular sets and stage effects which Dioclesian, King Arthur and The Fairy Queen, was revived after the Restoration, in 1663, English audiences came to regard as an each of them replete with music which is In 1700 English opera was moribund, it was given as a straight play with no music: essential feature of opera – also added among the greatest ever to grace the though not quite dead. The distinctive a bizarre and unhappy fate for the earliest much more music, including an elaborate English stage – filled the theatre night native genre, dramatic opera (or English all-sung opera! terminal Masque of Neptune, and two after night; but the productions, featuring semi-opera, as Roger North termed it, stellar names. Matthew Locke (1622–1677) breathtakingly elaborate sets and costumes, writing early in the eighteenth century), Not every theatregoer was enthusiastic was highly regarded as the composer of were hugely expensive to mount. It was was a curious hybrid: in essence, a spoken about dramatic opera. Roger North remarked music for many plays, and Pelham Humfrey too good to last. Necessary cost-cutting play with songs, lengthier musical scenes, that ‘some come for the play and hate (1648–1674), already a capable composer ensued in ordinary plays, creating stresses and dances spliced into it – ostensibly to the musick, others come onely for the when still a Chapel Royal chorister, had and eventually bitter divisions, which entertain the characters on the stage, musick, and the drama is penance to them’. been the privileged recipient, as soon as culminated in 1695 in an acrimonious split though in reality, of course, aimed at Yet, mongrel art-form though it was, it his voice broke, of royal funding to study into two competing companies – both of the audience in the theatre. It had went down well enough with the public on the continent. The 1674 Tempest which found it a struggle to mount arisen, early in the Restoration period, to lead another commentator, the writer proved to be a popular sensation, but dramatic opera in the grand manner. purely because England, or more precisely and librettist Peter Motteux, to offer a Humfrey, alas, died that same year. The The crowning misfortune came later that London, did not possess an opera house much more favourable gloss: ‘Other Nations,’ next box-office hit came the following year: year, when Purcell died suddenly, with or an opera company. It was therefore he wrote, ‘bestow the name of Opera only Psyche, with music by Locke and Giovanni the score of his last opera, The Indian the two theatrical companies in the on such Plays whereof every word is Battista Draghi (1640–1710), an Italian Queen, still incomplete; to make matters capital, the King’s and the Duke’s sung, but experience hath taught us that composer long resident in London. And worse, revival of The Fairy Queen, which (licensed at the Restoration by royal our English genius will not relish that the later 1670s, too, could boast a few with its production costs already recouped patent, and set up, of course, as purveyors perpetual Singing’. Its first conspicuous lesser successes, nearly all of them for could have turned a handsome profit, solely of spoken drama), which alone were success was a 1674 reworking of the enterprising and thriving Duke’s became impossible when the irreplaceable in a position to put any music on the Shakespeare’s The Tempest – or rather Company, which in 1682 amalgamated manuscript score went missing (not to public stage. Ironically, all-sung opera a reworking of a previous reworking, with the less prosperous King’s Company resurface until 1900). The later 1690s had been experimented with, in makeshift by William Davenant (a theatrical on takeover terms, to form the United saw dramatic opera at least kept alive, premises, during the last years of the entrepreneur who claimed, on shaky Company. with revivals of the other three works Commonwealth, though for purely political grounds, to be Shakespeare’s son) and by Purcell and new shows with music reasons – as a ploy to circumvent the John Dryden (the most distinguished But dramatic opera did not reach its by lesser composers, but its glory days government ban on public play-acting, playwright of the age, as well as Poet all-too-brief peak until the first three were over. with its feared potential for satire and Laureate), which had been staged in years of the 1690s, when the Company subversion. Even more ironically, when 1667, copiously adorned with songs by commissioned the young Henry Purcell All-sung opera in English, meanwhile, the first of three resulting works (The a gaggle of minor musicians. The 1674 (1659–1695) to write a new operatic unable to secure a foothold on the Siege of Rhodes, premièred in 1657, recension – newly spiced up with the score each season. The results – professional stage, had been largely confined to private productions. During the in English. On 21 March that year, the London 1680s these had brought to birth two Gazette announced: imperishable masterpieces – Venus and Adonis, by Purcell’s former teacher Several Persons of Quality having, for the John Blow (1649–1708), and Purcell’s Encouragement of MUSICK Advanced 200 Guineas, to be distributed in 4 Prizes, the own Dido and Æneas – but in the conditions First of 100, the Second of 50, the Third of of the period, particularly the absence of 30 and the Fourth of 20 Guineas, to such royal or noble patronage to offset its Masters as shall be adjudged to compose daunting costs (in sharp contrast to the the best; This is therefore to give Notice, situation in France), the genre was That those who intend to put in for the unviable as a public art-form. This was Prizes, are to repair to Jacob Tonson at brutally emphasised by the failure in Grays-Inn-Gate before Easter-Day next, 1685 – for political rather than musical where they may be further Informed. reasons – of the one all-sung English opera to be offered to a paying public: Those who did thus repair to Tonson’s shop Albion and Albanius, with music by the found that the competition involved French-trained Catalan Louis Grabu composing a one-act opera, to a libretto (appointed Master of the King’s Musick newly commissioned from William Congreve, at the Restoration by the Francophile one of the leading dramatists of the day. Charles II, but ousted by anti-Catholic Its plot, appropriately (and perhaps on legislation in the 1670s), and a libretto by Congreve’s part impishly), was itself Dryden. The work had been commissioned concerned with a competition, in which the at Charles’s behest, to celebrate the shepherd Paris is commanded by Mercury 25th anniversary of the Restoration, but to judge which of the goddesses Venus, it was the United Company that ended Pallas and Juno is the most beautiful – with up footing the crippling bill that resulted a golden apple for the winner; after a from the débâcle. careful appraisal of their charms, and of some slyly offered bribes, he succumbs to It was against this decidedly chequered the increasingly shameless blandishments historical background that, early in 1700, of Venus and awards her the prize. a group of opera-loving aristocrats led by Lord Halifax made an imaginative bid to The competition attracted four entrants: foster the development of all-sung opera Daniel Purcell (c.1664–1717) – younger First edition of Daniel Purcell’s The Judgment of Paris frontispiece brother, or possibly cousin, of Henry – who crammed with beauties and beaux, not one had served as chief composer at Drury scrub being admitted.

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