The Indian Queen
Drama in five acts
Play by John Dryden and Robert Howard
First performance: London, 1695
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
When Henry Purcell died at the young age of thirty-six, he was at the height of his career as a composer of dramatic music. Among the works dating from 1695, the last year of his life, is The Indian Queen, which was still incomplete at the time of his death. The music consists of overtures, dances and various vocal interludes for a play by John Dryden and Robert Howard. Whether Purcell would have added more music to the play itself we will never know, but he almost certainly would have set to music the concluding Masque of Hymen, a musical entertainment with only the thinnest connection to the main drama. Audience expectations and tradition demanded concluding masques, and Purcell's other dramas of this type had them. There is in fact a concluding masque that has come down to us for this work, but the score tells us that it is by his brother Daniel, "Mr. Henry Purcell being dead."
The Indian Queen was premiered as a play in 1664, more than thirty years before Purcell wrote his music for it. It was a collaboration between the great dramatist John Dryden and his brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard, a gifted amateur whose family, Macaulay wrote, was "wonderfully fertile of bad rhymers." The play was an enormous success, in part because of the spectacular machines and extravagant costumes, "the richest ever seen in England, or perhaps elsewhere upon a public stage," according to one observer. It is a type of heroic tragedy that was popular in Restoration drama, but which is very much out of fashion today: it is written entirely in rhymed couplets, and the characters embody various virtues and vices and undergo almost no development. Although the subject is exotic, the play makes no attempt at authentic ethnic color.
The story of The Indian Queen deals with wars between the Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico (two groups that never would have met, except in a European theater). The warrior Montezuma appears to be invincible and seems to assure victory to whichever side he is on. Montezuma falls in love with Orazia, the daughter of the Inca of Peru. She returns his love, but when the Inca disdainfully refuses to give his daughter to someone of "unknown birth," Montezuma goes over to the Aztecs, who are ruled by the wicker usurper, Queen Zempoalla. In the end, Montezuma is shown to be the rightful ruler of the Aztecs by birth, and the lovers are united. In the meantime, Zempoalla and so many others have died that Dryden had only two characters left when he to begin to write the sequel, The Indian Emperour.
The music to The Indian Queen has been called some of Purcell's finest work. Among other things, it includes some famous arias (e. g. "I attempt from love's sickness to fly in vain"), the solo "Ye twice ten hundred deities," which the historian Charles Burney called "the best piece of recitative in our language," and fine instrumental music. Yet it is rarely performed. One reason is no doubt that for a long time a score was difficult to find and orchestral parts were unavailable. But an even more important reason has been that the work is incomplete. The final masque by Purcell's brother Daniel is musically weak, despite its humorous text. As an ending, it makes for a long anticlimax to the glorious music in the body of the play. If a performance were simply to omit the masque and end where Henry's music ends, we would be left in the midst of the darkest moment of Act V, since the denouement of the play is without music. One needs the final musical entertainment.
Boston Baroque adopted one possible solution in performing The Indian Queen. That was to give the work a closing masque, but one written by Henry Purcell. For that performance, it was the masque that he wrote to end an adaptation of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. At the end of The Indian Queen, following much bloodshed and destruction, the warrior Montezuma is finally united with his beloved Orazia. Daniel Purcell's masque that follows is only marginally related to that story: it is about a quarreling married couple who are finally reconciled by love. Henry Purcell's masque from Timon of Athens is about a conflict between love and wine, which is resolved in the end. As an ending to the evening, Henry's masque is no more farfetched, equally humorous and musically far more satisfying.
To perform The Indian Queen, one might either present just the music as in a concert, or or one might attempt to connect it to the story. As in some of Purcell's other major dramatic works, the music is not designed to tell the story of the play, but rather to offer an occasional song or entertainment. It occurs sporadically in the drama, Act I having no music at all, and Act IV only one song. None of the main characters in the play and very few of the minor ones take part in the music. To give context therefore, one must either have actors actually stage the play or use a narration that can briefly connect the pieces of music and set the scene for each one. Boston Baroque's performance featured a narration fashioned primarily out of lines from the original play to which were added some connecting passages.
Boston Baroque Performances
The Indian Queen
February 26, 1988
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloists:
Laurence Senelick, narrator
Nancy Armstrong, soprano
Steven Rickards, countertenor
Sanford Sylvan, baritone