"O let me weep" (The Fairy Queen, Z. 629)
Sylvia McNair with Vienna Concentus Musicus,
Conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1994)
Composer: Henry Purcell
Librettist (Playwright): Thomas Betterton(?)
Libretto:
http://opera.stanford.edu/Purcell/FairyQueen/libretto.html
Source: William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream
First performance: Dorset Garden, London, 1692
Voicing: Soprano solo, D minor ( she sings it a semitone lower, a common practice for Baroque music)
Genre: Secular, Aria
Language: English
Instruments: Violin (or oboe, or possibly recorder)and continuo
Published: 1689
The main source for this song is Orpheus Britannicus. The collection of songs by Henry Purcell entitled Orpheus Britannicus is in two volumes, published in 1698 and 1702 respectively. These include solo songs, duets and dialogues, and some songs for 3 voices. For more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_Britannicus
The Fairy-Queen (Z.629) is a masque or semi-opera by Henry Purcell. It was first performed on May 2, 1692 at the Queen's Theatre, Dorset Garden in London by the United Company. The libretto is an anonymous adaptation of William Shakespeare's wedding comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Presumably the author or at least co-author of the libretto is Thomas Betterton, the manager of Dorset Garden Theatre with whom Purcell worked regularly. This assumption is based on an analysis of Betterton's stage directions. A collaboration between several playwrights is also feasible. Choreography for the various dances was provided by Josias Priest, who also worked on Dioclesian and King Arthur, and who was associated with Dido and Aeneas. Purcell did not set any of Shakespeare's text to music; instead he composed music for short masques in every act but the first. The play itself was also slightly modernized in keeping with seventeenth-century dramatic conventions, but in the main the spoken text is as Shakespeare wrote it. The masques are related to the play metaphorically, rather than literally. Many critics have stated erroneously that they bear no relationship to the play, but recent scholarship has shown that the opera, which ends with a masque featuring Hymen, the God of Marriage, was actually composed for the fifteenth wedding anniversary of William and Mary. A letter describing the original performance shows that the parts of Titania and Oberon were played by children of eight or nine.Presumably other fairies were also played by children, which changes our perspective of the staging.
The Plaint O, let me Weep! is part of the masque in Act V of Purcell's The Fairy Queen, where Juno appears and sings first the Epithalamium Thrice happy lovers, and then The Plaint. Peter Holman suggests that the quality and the range of the obbligato instrument indicate a recorder, rather than the violin: if this were so it would be the only instance in Purcell's works of his writing for a single recorder. Clifford Bartlett in his edition of the Fairy Queen suggests violin or oboe as the appropriate instrument.
Some of the others who recorded this aria:
Alfred Deller
Emma Kirkby
Jennifer Vyvyan
Catherine Bott
Kym Amps
Nancy Argenta
O let me weep, for ever weep,
My Eyes no more shall welcome Sleep;
I'll hide me from the sight of Day,
And sigh, and sigh my Soul away.
He's gone, he's gone, his loss deplore;
And I shall never see him more.
Tags: Henry Purcell Fairy Queen Let Me Weep Sylvia McNair English Baroque soprano Harnoncourt
