Classical music, opera, ballet and dance in Harrogate, United Kingdom

This traditional production of Patience was strongly sung and acted and was a joyful evening.

Purcell’s The Fairy Queen is a tricky thing to stage. It’s not an opera, with its own story-line, but a masque, a series of musical interludes intended to slot into a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One solution could be just to perform it in concert, but the music is so dramatic that it lends itself wonderfully to stage action.

“You will never, ever hear greater piano playing,” said Dame Fanny Waterman, DBE, as she stood on the stage of the resplendently-refurbished Royal Hall in Harrogate.