image: a reconstruction of the Act II finale from Dioclesian, at the Dorset Garden Theatre, to music by Purcell, 1690

On February 14th of this year, in Amsterdam, Frans Muller died, by his own choice, after a long and terminal illness. He and his wife Julie, who survives him, were long-standing STR members with a passion for early modern opera, music, drama and poetry generally. In their house on the Amstel they hosted 299 concerts – 35 years of young professionals playing and singing Baroque music – and fostered rigorous and exciting practical research into historically informed performance practice.

In 2011 they created a website as a way to show Frans’ animation of part of a reconstructed masque from Purcell’s Fairy Queen, which was the subject of an article written for Early Music (Nov. 2005). They wrote the following for the STR in 2021, after the covid isolation period gave them an opportunity to turn some of the thirty years of lectures for conservatories of music, theatre buffs, early opera lovers and other sympathisers into coherent pieces of writing, and update their website.

The animation and the discussion about the non-musical significance of the scene led to more research and added animations plus iconography.

Our main aim in discussing the semi-operas has always been to show how vitally important all the visual and textual aspects of opera are in grasping the meaning of what one is watching and listening to. This has entailed some serious and extensive criticism of contemporary productions which take no account at all of scholarship.

Over time, we added articles and books we had written or contributed to, translating from English to Dutch and vice versa, as the website is in both languages.

In 2023 they finished the Epilogue to their site, and now it is maintained by their daughter Emmy. It contains the distilled result of years of wide-ranging research and imaginative reconstruction, and will continue to give much informed pleasure to anyone interested in early modern theatre and opera and all the associated arts. Click here to go to their website.

a reconstruction of Hymen’s masque in Purcell’s Fairy Queen at Dorset Garden Theatre, 1692