The Armonico Consort started out as a choir - so what's it doing putting on a play with the co-author of The Vicar of Dibley? Terry Grimley finds out.
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Founded as recently as 2001, the Warwick-based Armonico Consort already has an impressive record of achievement.
With six CDs of choral music to its name - the first, of Francesco Scarlatti's Dixit Dominus featuring the queen of the British early music movement, Emma Kirkby - it has also developed a thriving sideline in staging opera, with the launch of Armonico Opera in 2005.
So far it has presented Purcell's The Fairy Queen and King Arthur followed by Mozart's The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro.
Now it has returned to Purcell with the piece generally regarded as his only full-blown opera (the other music-theatre pieces falling under the definition of "masques"), Dido and Aeneas. The consort is currently touring it, with the next performance coming up at the Warwick Festival next Wednesday, in a double-bill with Moliere's classic comedy about a ruthless social climber, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, with music by Jean-Baptise Lully.
While Dido and Aeneas is an opera, and England's first masterpiece in the genre, the Moliere is a play with music. Armonico founder and artistic director Christopher Monks explains how the group came to be lured further down the theatrical road.
"I've always done Dido as a semi-staged performance, but it's such a stunningly beautiful piece and being Purcell's only opera we had an ambition for years to do it as a staged performance. But the big dilemma is what to do with it, as it's only 40-50 minutes long.
"People have done various things, but I didn't want to copy anyone else's vision. In any case I had not been convinced by other people's solutions.
"I wanted to do something a bit lighter, and the obvious direction for me to look was French composers of the time, Lully and Rameau. I knew I wanted to do a comedy and then I came across this play by Moliere, and then this translation that Miles Malleson did in 1954, The Prodigious Snob.
"Two things really hit me. Firstly, although it has music all the way through, it's only about a third of the piece. And secondly, it's Lully at his very, very best. Moliere was the most prolific comefy writer of his time, but it seemef to me the story is just as relevant to an audience today. There are so many resonances that go with things like Only Fools and Horses and The Vicar of Dibley."
In fact, those resonances have been emphasised because Monks brought in Kit Hesketh Harvey, who co-wrote The Vicar of Dibley and also reworkef the librettos for Armico's Mozart productions.
"He's done ahilarious version. It's so brilliant and so funny -it's been worth the wait for years in a way. It balances perfectly with Dido.
"One of the things that gave us the confidence to do it is that we'd done The Magic Flute, which is about one-third a spoken play, and this is sort of the other way round."
An issue it has raised, however, is the importance of having good acting, as well as singing, skills in the company.
"We've brought in some trained actors to do the main parts. From the modern audience's point of view, with DVDs and musicals in London, people are used to having perfect all-round entertainment, and Ifeel unless your singers can genuinely act and express themselves it won't work.
"Somebody was telling me they spent a whole week on telephone acting at drama school. From now on when doing full operas I'm going to get a proper acting coach in."
While opera has been an important focus for Armonico Consort over the last three years, it has far from taken over from its choral work. In fact, it's first appearance at this year's Warwick International Festival, last night, included a performance of Handel's Dixit Dominus as well as Bach's Violin Concerto in A minor with Nicola Benedetti.
"We still are a choir," says Christopher Monks. "Two-thirds of our work is still choral, and rather than the opera taking over, the whole thing has got busier. We've got over 60 performances coming up over the next year - 29 performances of opera and 40 choral concerts."
Armonico has also now spawned a children's choir with 100 local youngsters. Ironically, all this activity has been taking place in the face of a loss of Arts Council project funding which is directly attributable to the demands on the National Lottery of the 2012 Olympic games.
"Our turnover is nearly £1 million and we've only been going for eight years. The Arts Council have been brilliant, but because of the Olympics we were told eight months ago that it was unlikely we would get any support.
"The sacrifice we're making this summer is all because of two weeks in 2012 - and for a very small amount of money as well.
"Rather than getting het up we decided to make it work on our terms, though I'm not sure we will be able to do it without the Arts Council. We've had to do it partly by putting on concerts that we know will do very well - or so we hope.
"But we have a lot of people who really believe, and everyone works so hard. It's just nice when it works."
* Armonico Consort presents Dido and Aeneas by Purcell and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Moliere and Lully at the King's High School for Girls, Warwick, as part of the Warwick International Festival on Wednesday July 2at 7.30pm (Box Office 01926 776438), and at the King's School Theatre, Worcester, on August 3 (2.30pm) as part of the Three Choirs Festival (Box office: 0845 652 1823).
