Based on an incident in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen is extraordinarily beautiful and contains some of the most inspired arias penned for the English language. David Pountney's production for the English National Opera is a spectacular offering as phantasmagorical as the enchanted dreams in the magical moonlit woods. The tale is a joyful fusion of music, dance and comedy which brings alive the splendor of the Baroque for a modern audience.