Purcell on film
Post categories: Rick Jones
| 09:54 UK time, Monday, 27 April 2009
(1650-1687) has a meaty part in 's 'biopic' about Henry Purcell (1659-1695) -England, My England - which has just been released on DVD by Warner. It was made 15 years ago for Purcell's 300th anniversary but it is fatally slow in coming to the point in 's and the late 's often eloquent but convoluted script. , the star of West End musicals, plays the grown-up composer, but doesn't appear until an hour has gone by.
Up to then it is all scene-setting with 's sleazy swanning between the court, the theatre and the brothels in London. pIays Nell Gwyn with the right sort of sharp-tongued, down-to-earth backchat for which the public loved her. An actress called , who was mistress of a government minister at the time, also appeared as one of the king's mistresses - art mirroring life.
In fact the film further frustrates the story by occasional references to contemporary political events (, an urban riot, some flag-burning) and a play-within-a-play device requiring us to watch actors playing actors putting on a performance of 's Good King Charles' Golden Days. Confused? You will be.
Problem is, there is just too llittle information about Purcell's non-musical life to create a film that uses his music as a backing score but resists actually talking about it except in the elementary layman's terms. 'Tis a catch Master Locke! The boy hath writ a catch!'
The music is beautifully performed by , the , the and others, but there is a constant tussle for prominence with the spoken word and the demands of the plot. It seems an attempt has been made to give everything equal weight at the cost of brevity.
This tendency to include all ideas is apparent even in the score where the scene is accompanied not with Purcell, one realises with a jolt, but by abrasive, modern orchestral music. One thinks one has nodded off and woken in some disaster movie until one realises this is a DVD with nothing to follow. The credits reveal this was 's Symphony of the Air from his rejected filmscore conducted by on a . It is a bizarre intrusion.
Meanwhile, at Thursday's Birthday celebration in , drew a link from Nell Gwyn not to Purcell but to the Bard himself through her first lover, an actor and son of Shakespeare's nephew. The pianist , the dancer Amy Button and I then illustrated Arthur's narrative with three Purcell songs, a gavotte by and an arrangement, again by Bach, of the slow movement of 's Oboe Concerto. A crowd of a hundred turned up, laughed a few times and clapped enough for two bows at the end. K was there. Thank you to anyone else who came. I think we got away with Oh Solitude just about.
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