Arts & Events

As part of their 2017 Summer Festival, American Bach Soloists presented two performances, August 10-11, of 17th century British composer Henry Purcell’s King Arthur at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In fashioning King Arthur, Purcell set music to a verse text by poet John Dryden. This was not the first time Purcell and Dryden had teamed up to create works of semi-opera, a genre derived from the court and theatre masques that combined music, theatre and dance. Previously, Dryden and Purcell had worked together on Dioclesian, and, sub-sequently, they combined their talents on The Indian Queen. Purcell and Dryden were a good match: Dryden conceived drama as “nature wrought up to a higher pitch,” while Purcell had acquired a better understanding of Italian musical conventions than any other English composer of the late 17^th century. Moreover, both Dryden and Purcell sought successfully to create a truly English art that would celebrate English life. -more-

West Edge Opera currently presents three performances, August 5, 13, and 19, of French composer Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet at their new venue at Pacific Pipe, an abandoned steel factory in West Oakland. I attended the Sunday matinee on August 13. Although based on Shakespeare’s play, many of the bard’s famous lines are missing from the libretto of this opera, the work of Michel Carré who adapted it from a play by Alexandre Dumas père. The great “To be or not to be” speech is truncated. Only “Être ou ne pas être” survives. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and everything else in this beloved speech are cut. Never-theless, much of the greatness of Shakespeare’s Hamlet comes through in this opera, especially when it is as grandly sung as in this West Edge Opera production. -more-