by Frank Nowell, Artistic Director
November 2011
Venus and Adonis
Behold my arrows and my bow; And I desire my art to show.
No one bosom shall be found, ere I have done, without a wound,
But it would be the greatest art to shoot myself into your heart.
Thither with both my wings I move; Pray entertain the God of Love.
—Cupid, opening scene of Venus and Adonis
Soon after the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado performed Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in 2009, I began thinking about doing a similar concert presentation of its companion work, John Blow’s Venus and Adonis. This is a work that deserves many more modern-day performances than it receives! Composed about six years before Purcell’s better-known work, it is quite similar to Dido and Aeneas in structure, pacing, and musical style, with the additional aspect of a delightful scene featuring a children’s chorus.
Blow held the positions of organist at Westminster Abbey, Musician for the King’s Virginals, and Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. He was Purcell’s teacher, and the two musicians enjoyed an ongoing association as colleagues in both church and court. Composing in Restoration England, Purcell and Blow may have been trying to develop an English opera in response to King Charles II’s desire to imitate and compete with the French court of Louis XIV.
Blow subtitled Venus and Adonis, “A Masque for the Entertainment of the King,” referring to a genre popular in 16th- and 17th-century England. But the primary model for Blow (and Purcell) was probably the chamber operas of the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. In the words of Watkins Shaw, the work’s “royal associations . . . led him to call it a masque, but it is a true, though miniature, opera. French and Italian elements are plainly to be seen in it, but Blow’s synthesis is the product of an independent mind, and the work is in a high degree original.”
Blow’s chamber opera may have indeed been for the King’s entertainment, but it also was loaded with sharp commentary on the vanity and social conventions of the court. (The commentary may have been made more vivid by the fact that the cast of the opera included both the king’s mistress and her daughter!) Drawing on the Arcadian ideal — the concept of shepherds living in a golden age of art and love — Blow contrasts life at court with the natural affections of the pastoral life. The prologue draws this contrast early in an infectious air sung by Cupid and repeated by a chorus of shepherds:
In these sweet groves love is not taught,
Beauty and pleasure is not bought;
To warm desires the women nature moves,
And every youthful swain by nature loves.
For these concerts I am delighted to welcome back countertenor Robert Sussuma (our sorceress in Dido and Aeneas) as Cupid and soprano Amanda Balestrieri as Venus. Bass-baritone Peter Becker makes his first BCOC appearance in the role of Adonis, and we are also joined by members of the Boulder Children’s Chorale as “little Cupids.” Vocalists Abigail Chapman, Marjorie Bunday, Daniel Hutchings, and Michael Aiello, together with the BCOC Chorus, round out the performing forces.
Venus and Adonis Program
Henry Purcell, Selections from The Married Beau, Z. 603
Purcell, Sonata of Three Parts no. 1 in G minor, Z. 790
Nicola Matteis, Ground after the Scotch Humour
Purcell, Rejoice in the Lord Alway, Z. 49
John Blow, Venus and Adonis: A Masque for the Entertainment of the King
