This is an extract from “King Arthur” Act III, scene 2. This Purcell’s scenic work is the only one of being considered as the most successful semi-opera from which Theatre Royal earn a lot of money in the 1690s. It was praised by the first critics who highlighted how particularly astonishing was the realization of The Frost Scene. Some music-specialized historians thought that a similar episode from the opera Isis (1677) by Jean-Baptiste Lully (“Le Chœur des Trembleurs”) inspired Purcell but he did read it in another way (see the chromaticism of Cold Genius’s aria). Syllable notes which are doubled, tripled or even quadrupled are meant to be detached. We suggested the plucked indication in parenthesis, thus it cannot be mistaken with manuscript’s notations (note to note slurs). In this extract, the tempo is fast and accents are mostly placed on the first and the third time of each bar.
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