Abdelazer, or The Moor's Revenge Z570 Purcell wrote a song, ‘Lucinda is bewitching fair’, and theatre airs* for a revival of Aphra Behn's bloody tragedy set in fifteenth-century Spain. The play was produced at Drury Lane* probably on 25 March 1695, with Jemmy Bowen* singing the song on stage. The airs were printed in 1697 in A Collection of Ayres* with the overture placed first and the other movements reordered, but an early manuscript (the violin book GB-Lbl, Add. MS 35043) preserves the order as played in the theatre – followed in PS 16. Benjamin Britten’s* Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue of a Theme of Purcell, Op. 34, 1945) made famous the Third Act Tune Z570/2, a rondeau* in hornpipe* rhythm. However, the First Act Tune Z570/8, another hornpipe, was more popular at the time: its tune, entitled ‘The hole in the wall’, was given a country dance* choreography and was printed in all editions of The Dancing Master from 1698. BalSta, PlaDan, PriPur.

Academy of Ancient Music The Academy was founded in 1726 as the Academy of Vocal Music by professional musicians including the composers J.C. Pepusch and Maurice Greene, with Bernard Gates (1686–1773) and Henry Needler (1685–1760) leading its singers and orchestra. The last two had Purcellian connections. As a Chapel Royal choirboy, Gates would have known Purcell, while Needler, an accountant, had been taught the violin by John Banister* junior and ‘the principles of harmony’ by ‘Purcell’ – presumably Daniel Purcell* or Henry's son Edward. Following the notorious quarrel in 1731 over Bononcini's plagiarism of a madrigal by Lotti, and the subsequent departure of Greene and others to found the rival Apollo Academy, its name was changed to the Academy of Ancient Music. Under the direction of Pepusch and his successor Benjamin Cooke it focussed on old music, including Purcell, though it was never exclusively antiquarian, performing much modern Italian concerted music.