King Arthur is a work that defies categorization. A collaboration between Henry Purcell and John Dryden, it is a hybrid piece, half spoken drama, half an opera made up of seven musical tableaux. The plot concerns Arthur, the legendary king of the Britons, and is advanced in the spoken dialogue, while the music provides the allegorical trimmings. As a result, the singers do not play particular roles but keep changing, appearing as gods, shepherds, nymphs and even as a referee in a boxing match. But neither of these two genres, spoken drama or opera, would be conceivable without the other in this work.
In attemping to define this strange beast, Nikolaus Harnoncourt has described King Arthur as “the first musical in history”, for the work contains not only singing and spoken dialogue but also a great deal of dancing. And, as in every good musical, the plot involves a love story: Arthur, the king of the Britons, loves beautiful blind Emmeline, but Oswald, the king of the Saxons, loves her, too. The result is war, The love intrigue is at the heart of the piece, but the rivalry between the two kings also symbolizes the battle not only between their two nations, namely, the Britons and the Saxons, but also between their two religions: the Britons are decent Christians, while the Saxons still believe in Woden, Thor and Freya. But all these quarrels are spiced up by the intervention of spirits, with each of the warring factions having at its disposal a magician and a spirit of the air or earth that keep trying to outdo each other, with art pitted against art, and magic against conjuring tricks.
First performed at the Queen’s Theatre, Dorset Garden, in 1691, King Arthur is a typical product of the British Baroque. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Britons of that period were a nation of grumpy old men where opera was concerned: "Experience hath taught us that our English genius will not rellish that perpetual Singing," we read in the Gentleman's Journal in January 1692. Audiences preferred gaudy stage spectacles offering a variety of genres. Nor were librettists particularly fastidious in their taste: plots had to be amusing and true to life but they also had to contain a hint of frivolity, slapstick humour and sensational and even gruesome effects: there were burning temples and lowering storms, including thunder and lightning, wind and rain, in which entire fleets of ships would be lost, and in the case of monumental battles such as the one that begins King Arthur, Dryden, A a true man of the theatre fully aware of what was effective onstage - would equip his performers with sponges soaked in blood in order to ensure that the full horror of the scene was given its due.
All these aspects were taken into account by Jürgen Flimm and Nikolaus Harnoncourt when they set about devising a concept for their Salzburg production of King Arthur. First, however, they had to come up with a performing version: there is no surviving full score offering a definitive version of the work or containing either a clear running order of the individual numbers or an indication as to their instrumentation. Purcell’s music has survived only in sixty scattered and in part contradictory sources. Only Dryden’s wordbook can offer any guidance, yet it is clear that not even Purcell himself felt bound to adhere to it exactly: the surviving material also includes settings of words that are not by Dryden at all. The Salzburg version goes back to Dryden’s original libretto, but in a new translation: the spoken dialogue is performed in German, while the musical numbers are sung in English. Blocks of music and dialogue are arranged in such a way as to produce a sensible and well-balanced interplay between them. Nikolaus Harnoncourt instrumented the music for his own orchestra, the Concentus Musicus, and his wife, who plays the violin in the orchestra, prepared a manuscript part for each individual player.
King Arthur is a masterpiece of the Baroque theatre and so it was only fitting that it should be performed in a Baroque building in Salzburg, the Felsenreitschule, which dates from 1693 and which once housed equestrian games and hunts. This Baroque playing area provides the starting point for the sets: spectators can see the famous arcades, but they can also see through them, with the result that the arcades function as windows affording a glimpse of other worlds. How is this done? A second arcaded wall, made of wood, was erected in front of the stone wall. It, too, was three storeys high and was accessible to the performers. The artificial wall served as the acting area, while the stone wall was covered in cloths. And behind these cloths were sixty-seven video projectors that allowed whole landscapes and other images to be projected on to them from behind: the result was a theatre of magic using the resources of the 21st century.
In the subtitle of his libretto, Dryden described King Arthur as "adorn’d with Scenes, Machines, Songs and Dances", and these machines -including even authentic Baroque machines - were naturally used in the present production, with Baroque flying machines rising to the occasion whenever the spirits work their wonders: for his scene in Act II, for example, Merlin flies in on a surfboard, while Philidel, the spirit of the air, performs a graceful aerial ballet; Cupid, the god of love, soars through the air, and Grimbald, the evil spirit of the earth, is finally burnt up in the air - the air is not, of course, his native element, as he comes from hell, appearing through trapdoors in the stage floor to the accompaniment of sulphurous, musty smells and dry ice. Some of the episodes in this production were improvised by the actors, notably when the spirits appear and try to trick one another. Spectators may be reminded of the commedia dell'arte tradition, and Merlin and Philidel, Crimbald and Osmond certainly have points in common with the servants of the Italian improvised theatre inasmuch as they, too, are the helpers and accomplices of their respective masters.
And finally there is the orchestra and its conductor, all of whom are placed not in the orchestra pit but in the middle of the stage, in a circular depression. The acting takes place not only behind, in front of, to the side of, and above the orchestra but even within it. Even more remarkably, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his players also take part in the action. The conductor not only hands the actors their props ("Mr Harnoncourt, do you happen to have a sword on you?"), but he also wears a bobble cap during the Frost Scene and, together with his players, underscores certain bits of magic business. The climax comes in Act V, during the grand finale. Here Nikolaus Harnoncourt, one of the gurus of the early music scene and a prophet and pioneer of period performing practice, conducts the drinking song "Your hay it is mow’d" as if the tenor Michael Schade were a rock star and the Concentus Musicus his band, with percussion aplenty and a pounding beat. Technology provides a colour organ, and everyone on stage can join in the chorus - and that includes the audience, too.