Photo © Alastair Muir
Opus Arte DVD The Fairy Queen won best DVD performance at the Gramophone magazine awards, this weekend. Purcell’s soaring semi-opera was performed at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2009 and released on DVD in April. The original Gramophone review found the DVD performance to be “beautifully sung, terrifically acted, this is a magnificent show”.
The director, Jonathan Kent, interspersed scenes from the opera with some from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, reuniting Purcell’s work with its original source material, and providing the audience with a rich and full interpretation of the story.
The Gramophone Awards are considered the world’s most influential classical music awards. For a full list of the winners and for more information about the awards, see their website, here.