Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Suite from The Fairy Queen
Premiered: 1692, London
Duration: 9 minutes
Purcell’s career as a composer was relatively brief, but The Fairy Queen is widely considered some of his best music for theatre. Based loosely on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the semi-opera saw a resurgence in popularity in the late 20th century as a renewed interest in Baroque music brought this work back to the masses.