Angel Magick, music by John Harle, libretto by David Pountney
London premiere (world premiere at Aldburgh last week)

Dr John Dee       Christopher Good
Edward Kelley     Donald Maxwell
Sir Philip Sidney William Purefoy
Edmund Spenser    Jacqueline Miura
Queen Elizabeth I Sarah Leonard
Giordano Bruno    Andrew Forbes-Lane
Jane Dee          Lucy Burge
Joan Kelley       Jan Pearson
Voice             Jim Carter

Conductor         John Harle
Director          David Pountney

Fretwork
The Bauhaus Band

"A scientific ritual in one action of seven parts"

A work of music theatre about John Dee's attempt to summon up angels, using
the original writings of Dee and his assistant Edward Kelley (who was the
only person who could see the angels), alway risked being posy. I think
David Pountney was aiming for something between Sally Potter and Derek
Jarman, but almost inevitably he came up with Blackadder, right down to a
shrieking Queen Elizabeth. John Harle's music seemed to me to come out of
it a bit better, mainly because he didn't try any jokes.

Angel Magick is organized in seven scenes, each introduced by a chord (made
up of values derived from Dee's writings), and a voice asking the name of
the new planet and its angel. The themes of the planets fit clearly into
the plot in some places, and the scene arrangement didn't do any harm to
the dramatic development, though it didn't seem to me to help much either.
Each scene has a different musical style, held together by the use of
"Elizabethan" themes, played on amplified viols.

The action falls clearly into two parts. In the first, Dee is interrupted
as he and Kelly prepare for the ritual. Kelley is in love with Jane Dee,
and sympathizes when her child is hurt, while Dee measures the brick the
child used to hit himself on the head. The poets Sidney and Spencer come
and try to engage him in a debate about poetry. They are mocked by Kelley
as a pair of sodomites. (The libretto ignores the differences of class and
aesthetics between the two, but gets a gender-bending twist by having a gay
couple sung by a counter-tenor and a mezzo with a beard.) The Queen shows
up, furious that Frobisher has returned from his travels with pyrites
instead of gold. Giordano Bruno, whom she has brought along, turns the
pyrites into gold, and has an audience with Dee. In the second part, the
angels appear, in fact projections of the people in the first part, and
(presumably interpreted by Kelley) tell Dee that he and Kelly have to share
their wives. They do, but Dee realises that the whole exercise has been
futile and, announcing that the final planet is earth and its angel is man,
he ends the masquerade.

I think it could be entertaining. But in the conditions of this
performance, I couldn't be sure whether there was much there. Performing on
a round stage in the Albert Hall arena, the unamplified singers didn't
really have a chance (though Jacqueline Miura in particular was still
impressive). Christopher Good, as Dee, was amplified, and theatrical
without being over the top. I couldn't always hear him, however, because of
the position of the speakers. The instrumental music survived better,
though the balance with the voices was often wrong.

But the music is often attractive, especially the poets' duets, and at its
least interesting it's pleasant in a commercial sort of way. The angels are
fine theatre, as is Dr Dee himself, and the question as to whose interest
ritual is in is also an interesting one. As in Faust, there is always a
strong possibility that the alleged discoveries of science are nothing but
showmanship. I'm not sure that Donald Maxwell's characterization of Kelley
brought this out. He was more thuggish than ironic, not quite sharp-looking
enough.

Probably worth another try, though not for the conservative.