With its lavish music and elaborate staging, the semi-opera King Arthur is one of the master-pieces in Purcell’s works. On a text by the poet John Dryden very freely inspired from Arthurian legend and specifically devised for him, Purcell created a work of great expressive intensity which includes among his most beautiful and well-known arias.
While an undergraduate at Cambridge, John Eliot Gardiner launched his career as a conductor with a performance of Vespro della Beata Vergine by Monteverdi, in 1964, which led to the foundation of the Monteverdi Choir. In 1968 he founded the Monteverdi Orchestra. Upon changing from modern instruments to period instruments in 1977, the orchestra changed its name to the English Baroque Soloists in 1978. Gardiner is one of the best conductors in the historically informed movement. © Warner Classics