Sheet music
Composer(s):
Publisher(s):
Publishernumber:
PUR18-1
Instrument(s):
Overige informatie:
Score/Parts
Earn 800 Poppels with this product
Purcell’s music for Circe comes in Act I, Scene 4. Iphigenia, Priestess of Diana at the Scythian court on the island of Tauris, has attracted the rival love of King Thoas and Prince Ithacus, the son of Queen Circe by a former marriage. Circe is furious, but Iphigenia rejects both men and urges Ithacus to marry Osminda, Thoas’s daughter by a former queen. The situation leads Circe to summon spirits to foretell the future. As can be seen in the extract from Davenant’s text, Purcell’s setting consists of four sections that were originally interspersed by lines spoken by Circe, though they are effective performed in concert as a single sequence without speech. Before the last section, the superb accompanied recitative ‘Pluto arise’, there is a stage direction and music for the G minor Magicians’ Dance (later reused in D minor by Purcell in the suite for The Married Beau Z603/2). Pluto, having arisen from the depths via a trapdoor, speaks rather than sings in the play, so there is a danger of anticlimax in a concert performance, but it works well if the music ends with a repeat of the Magicians’ Dance, even though it means that it finishes out of the home key, C major. Introduction by Peter Holman.
Composer(s):
Publisher(s):
Publishernumber:
PUR18-1
Instrument(s):
ISBN:
Number:
903293
Overige informatie:
Score/Parts
