Upcoming Concerts & Performances
3 upcoming concerts and performances from Henry Purcell Society of Boston, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All classical in Greater Boston →
Fri Nov 20 · 7:00pm
A masque first staged in London in 1696, with a libretto by Peter Anthony Motteux, telling the story of the affair between Venus and Mars and the trap her husband Vulcan lays for them. Contemporaries praised its music as having 'excelled even itself'. The Purcell Society performs it in the Cathedral Church of St Paul.
Sat Jan 23 · 6:00pm
The first instalment of a new series built around the food, drink and social world that surrounded seventeenth-century English music, led by theatre historian Robert Lublin with chef Jason Wang. Purcell and the Pub recreates the tavern culture in which much of this repertoire was actually heard, with the audience seated around the table rather than facing a platform.
Sat Apr 17
Purcell's symphony songs — large-scale works for several voices and strings in which the instruments carry as much of the narrative as the singers, and which are rarely programmed — set beside the trio sonatas of William Boyce, who belonged to the generation after him. The pairing traces what English instrumental writing did with Purcell's example.
