Henry Purcell

The Fairy Queen

A London theatre-goer, attending the first performance of Purcell's opera in May 1692, may have expected to see a new and exciting production, in which he was promised that the composer, 'Mr Purcell [...] joyns Delicacy and Beauty of the Italian way [with] the Graces and Gayety of the French'. Not only would there have been music to attract the ear, but the eye too would have been entertained as each successive scene unfolds with a brilliant theatrical transformation. The present edition of Purcell's operatic masterpiece offers the first ever complete and ordered publication of any of Purcell's operas, with the inclusion of the complete and performable musical and spoken text in sequential order.The editor, Michael Burden, is Fellow and Dean of New College, Oxford, University Reader in Opera Studies and Director of New Chamber Opera. His other publications include Performing the Music of Henry Purcell (OUP 1996) and Henry Purcell's Operas: The Complete Texts (OUP 2000).