Following their acclaimed recording of John Eccles’s Semele, the Academy of Ancient Music and Cambridge Handel Opera Company reunited for the première recording of John Weldon’s The Judgment of Paris. Directed by Julian Perkins, this recording was released on AAM Records in March 2025. It was Critics' Choice in Gramophone (twice over), Record of the Week on BBC Radio 3 and Editor's Choice in Limelight. Julian gives an overview below.
In 2013 I had the good fortune to record Daniel Purcell’s setting of William Congreve’s The Judgment of Paris. Dating from 1701, Daniel Purcell’s operatic masque was written for the Musick Prize. Sponsored by a group of wealthy aristocrats, this was a competition to compose and perform a setting of Congreve’s libretto, and was probably intended to rekindle the fire of English opera following Henry Purcell’s early death in 1695. Nobody was to know then that a young Handel would soon erupt onto London’s opera scene with Rinaldo, so the question was: Who would be the next English Orpheus? Daniel Purcell (Henry’s brother) certainly made a good case with his entry; extended vocal runs on words such as ‘rural’ and ‘beauties’ contrast markedly with assertive trumpet writing to create what is perhaps the most virtuosic of the three surviving settings from the competition (Gottfried Finger’s version is lost). In the event, though, Purcell was placed only third.
Jump to 2022 and my position as Artistic Director of Cambridge Handel Opera Company. Having staged our production of Handel’s Tamerlano in 2021, discussions turned to a sequel for our concert performance and recording of John Eccles’s Semele with the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM). Given that John Weldon had pipped Eccles into second place at the 1701 competition, surely his, as yet, unrecorded setting of The Judgment of Paris was worth exploring? If nothing else, I wanted to understand why a young Weldon had (unexpectedly?) won the contest. It was an intriguing discovery. With its creative text setting, colourful instrumental writing and strategic use of the chorus, I soon realized that Weldon’s work is a gem. We just had to share it with our audiences.
First, the plot. Mercury descends from the heavens to inform Paris, a Trojan prince who thinks he’s a shepherd, that he is to judge a beauty contest between Venus, Pallas Athene (Pallas) and Juno. As goddesses of love, war and marriage, respectively, their approaches to winning the ‘Golden Apple’ as fairest of them all set Venus apart. While Juno offers empire and Pallas invariable military victory, Venus tantalizes Paris with the prospect of winning the beautiful Helen of Troy as consort. She seduces with liquid consonants for her opening ‘Hither turn thee, gentle Swain’, in contrast to Pallas, who invokes martial might from the start with the imperative ‘This way, Mortal, bend thy Eyes’. Between these two extremes lies the haughty Juno who deigns only to make a brief appearance in this trifling contest: how she expects to win Paris over by warning him to ‘judge aright’ is a mystery. Unsurprisingly (and true to the myth), carnal lust prevails and the piece ends (spoiler alert) with Paris falling for Venus’s promise. In doing so, he sets off a sequence of events which lead inexorably to the Trojan War and his own death. Hardly the wisest of judgments.
Each goddess is strongly characterized by Weldon. First up is Juno, whose arrival is announced by a spiky string symphony, after which our continuo team (two harpsichords, bass viol and theorbo) underpins no fewer than twelve iterations of the word ‘Beware’, when she essentially orders Paris to choose her. By contrast, the trumpet and oboe often act as Pallas’s henchmen, while a pair of recorders give velvety sensuality to Venus’s world.
Casting the three goddesses was a delightful challenge. Although they are described in the score as three sopranos, I opted for one soprano and two mezzo-sopranos to heighten their differences. Kitty Whately brought a sensuous sting to Pallas’s bellicose statements, while Helen Charlston captured Juno’s imperiousness. As Venus, the soprano Anna Dennis found that enigmatic sweet spot between seduction and vulnerability. Pitch played a vital part in all of this and inhabiting the relatively low world of A=392Hz (approximately one tone below modern concert pitch) enhanced our goddesses’ considerable vocal allure.
Few mortals could cope with the prospect of judging three immortal Beauty Queens, and baritone Jonathan Brown evokes a kaleidoscope of contradictory emotions as the intoxicated Paris. Weldon even has him break down mid-sentence with the words ‘Help me Hermes or I die’ when he first sees the goddesses from afar, resulting here in a deliberately disembodied, breathy sound. As Mercury, tenor Thomas Walker’s assertive brilliance strengthens Paris’s resolve and it’s not long before this lucky ‘shepherd’ cheekily asks for a striptease: ‘And since a gay Robe an ill Shape may disguise / When each is undrest I’ll judge of the best / For ’tis not a Face that must carry the Prize’. Set as a raunchy gigue, this is one of many instances where AAM’s principal violinists, Bojan Čičić and Julia Kuhn, spar creatively with the vocal soloists in ornamental interplay.
Creative sparring also came to the fore when preparing for this project, and I was blessed to have a trio of academic deities advising me: Peter Holman, Alan Howard and Ruth Smith. They helped me to discover that alchemy whereby practical musicianship is ignited by meaningful scholarship to enable what I term Historically Inspired Performance (as opposed to Historically Informed Performance). Our ample CD booklet reflects this with contributions by them and others including Dame Emma Kirkby and David Blackadder (AAM’s principal trumpeter) – and even a chocolate expert. Read the booklet to find out more!
As a contest within a contest, The Judgment of Paris was clearly an apt choice for the 1701 competition. Moreover, both contests are about aesthetic judgment and the notion of free will. Practically, Congreve’s succinct libretto resulted in settings that last only between 50 and 75 minutes, thus allowing all four versions to be heard on the same day for the grand finale in 1701. In 1989 a re-enactment of the competition at the BBC Proms led to an audience vote that appeared (in pre-digital voting days) to have been a tie between Eccles and Weldon – before the Proms controller decided to rewrite history by giving his casting vote to Eccles.
The release of our disc of Weldon’s The Judgment of Paris in March 2025 comes just over a decade after my recording of Daniel Purcell’s version, in which Anna Dennis also stars as Venus. Now that all three surviving settings are finally on record, we can stage this competition from the comfort of our living rooms. Lining up from youngest to oldest composer:
- John Weldon – Julian Perkins / Academy of Ancient Music & Cambridge Handel Opera Company (AAM Records, 2025)
- John Eccles – Christian Curnyn / Early Opera Company (Chandos Records, 2009)
- Daniel Purcell – Julian Perkins / Spiritato & The Rodolfus Choir (Resonus, 2014)
Will you judge aright?
© Julian Perkins
