TRACKLISTING
CD 1
The Fairy Queen (beginning)
Part I: Oberon's Birthday
Part II: Night and Silence
Part III: The Sweet Passion

CD 2
The Fairy Queen (conclusion)
Part IV: Epithalamium

Dido and Aeneas
Overture
Act I
Act II
Act III

RECORDING INFORMATION
Purcell’s The Fairy Queen is a succession of masques based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and first performed in London in 1692. The score was lost a few years after Purcell’s death in 1695 and was found in 1901 in the library of the Royal Academy of Music. The recording presented here is a shortened version of the work made for performance at the 1967 Aldeburgh Festival in a performing edition by Imogen Holst and conducted by Benjamin Britten (who had a lifelong passion for the music of Purcell).

Coupled with this and appearing for the first time on CD is Janet Baker's second recording (made in December 1975) for Decca of Purcell’s popular opera, Dido and Aeneas. Steuart Bedford, who conducted the first performances of Britten’s final opera, Death in Venice (1973), and his cantata Phaedra (1976), conducts an outstanding cast of English singers in this recording.