Tales of mortals who marry fairies don’t generally end well but have often made for spellbinding narratives. The ancient Welsh legend of the Lady of the Lake, recorded in the 14th-century manuscript Llyfr Coch Hergest, provided the inspiration for The Faerie Bride by composer Gavin Higgins and librettist Francesca Simon. Acclaimed for their first collaboration, The Monstrous Child, this new work is styled a cantata, using just two singers with full orchestra, a reflection of Higgins’s role as composer-in-association with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales who premiered it at the Aldeburgh festival.
As the farmer telling in sad retrospect his story of falling in love with the woman who rose from the glacial waters of Carmarthenshire’s Llyn y Fan Fach, baritone Roderick Williams was unfailingly clear and expressive. Emerging from the instrumental texture as though from the misty depths of the lake, mezzo soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons as his bride conveyed an aura of otherworldliness. The couple’s happiness is real but conditional, for it is she who set the marriage terms, vowing to return to her watery underworld should she be struck three heart blows. That her faerie blood gives her sight into the future leads to the misunderstandings which in turn cause the blows that send her back into the lake, leaving her husband bereft.
