King Arthur was the only one of Purcell's professionally produced operas to have been designed as a semi-opera - the others were all adaptations of earlier plays. Dryden made a real attempt to integrate the music into the drama,but since he ascribed to the dramatic conventions of the period which virtually confined music to allegorical or supernatural beings and their worshippers, or servants, shepherds and similar characters, the main action mostlyoccurs in the spoken sections, and even the two...

• Brave Souls
• Come If You Dare
• Come, Follow Me
• Come, Shepherds
• Fairest Isle
• For Love Ev'ry Creature
• Great Love
• Hither, This Way
• How Blest Are Shepherds
• How Happy The Lover
• I Call
• Let Not A Moonborn Elf
• No Part Of My Dominion
• Our Natives Not Alone Appear
• Recitative, 'The White Horse Neigh'd'
• Recitative, 'Woden First To Thee'
• Round Thy Coast
• Saint George
• See, See, We Assemble
• Shepherd, Shepherd, Leave Decoying
• Sound A Parley
• The Lot Is Cast
• Thou Doting F...