Boyce: Peleus And Thetis & Other Theatre Music

Description

This is an extremely enjoyable recording. Boyce's theatre music is particularly successful: it is light, almost trivial, but instantly catchy and peculiarly memorable.
The major work is Peleus and Thetis and tells of the mortal Peleus' love for the goddess Thetis, Jupiter's rage at this, and his subsequent acquiescence following the prophecy from Prometheus (chained to the rock and having his liver pecked out by a vulture the while) that Thetis' child will be 'greater than the father'.
Also included are the 'Music for animating the statue' from The Winter's Tale (Florizel and Perdita, as it became in David Garrick's adaptation) and, by contrast, the sombre Dirge from Romeo and Juliet (which accompanied the carrying out of the supposedly-dead Juliet—a scene not in Shakespeare's original play but which was popularly interpolated in the eighteenth century). The constant tolling of the funeral bell is strangely haunting, and apparently contributed to the success of Garrick's production at Drury Lane over the rival Romeo and Juliet being presented simultaneously across the road in Covent Garden.