John Blow's Venus and Adonis: EMS 14 February

[doversoul1]

Hannah French presents a performance of John Blow's Venus and Adonis for Valentine's Day. The earliest surviving English opera, which served as the model for Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, was written for the court of King Charles II in 1683
[…]
In today's performance recorded last year at the Rennie Mackintosh Church in Glasgow, Mhairi Lawson is Venus, Matthew Brook Adonis, and Jessica Leary Cupid. The Dunedin Consort is conducted by John Butt.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07031ft

[doversoul1]

A very good reminder (to me, that is) that Purcell didn’t spring up from nowhere. Here’s the (not at the same venue) performance if anybody is interested in watching it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uf0wfEMb-o

John Blow: Venus and Adonis - Dunedin Consort (Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht 2015)

I thought Hannah French presented the programme well. Johann Christoph Pepusch’s Venus and Adonis Overture performed by The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen was a nice little bonus.

[ardcarp]

Thanks, dovers. I'm just spending a wet afternoon emjoying this. The Restotoration is a fascinating period musically. If my memory serves me correctly, the only one of Cooke's Children to study in Paris was Pelham Humfrey, who came back a proper little 'French Monsieur'. As Pepys had it:

Little Pelham Humphreys is an absolute monsieur as full of form and confidence and vanity, and disparages everybody's skill but his own. The truth is, every body says he is very able, but to hear how he laughs at all the King's musick here, as Blagrave and others, that they cannot keep time nor tune, nor understand anything; and that Grebus, the Frenchman, the King's master of the musick, how he understands nothing, nor can play on any instrument, and so cannot compose: and that he will give him a lift out of his place; and that he and the King are mighty great! and that he hath already spoke to the King of Grebus would make a man piss.

I wonder if the musical influence of Lully and the French Court imbued the music of Blow and Purcell by other means too?