Georgia Mann Stages 17th-Century DJ Set at Banqueting House — SkimNews
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- Georgia Mann is curating a Jacobean-Carolean Classical DJ set this weekend beneath the Rubens painted ceiling at Banqueting House in Whitehall, where the ceiling has returned to public view following a period of restoration and conservation.
- Banqueting House masques were lavish 17th-century performances blending opera, theatre and ballet, designed by the building's architect Inigo Jones — the article likens them to "a VIP ticket to Glastonbury, Glyndebourne and a Killing Kittens sex party," with performers reportedly getting so drunk they vomited on stage.
- Lutenist Robert Johnson composed the music for the first-ever performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest at Banqueting House in November 1611, including Full Fathom Five and Where the Bee Sucks — settings soprano Ruby Hughes still performs today on her album Amidst the Shades.
- Charles I's wife Henrietta Maria danced the lead role in the masque Tempe Restored, lowered from the ceiling on a jewelled chariot — described in the article as radiating "Strong Beyoncé energy" — and was rumoured to have had a romantic relationship with star lutenist Jacques Gaultier.
- Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader who banned Christmas carols and shut the theatres, used Banqueting House as his primary hall of audience in 1654, and biographer Paul Lay places him at the "milder end" of a "spectrum of puritanism" — a music lover who had his favourite organ hauled from Magdalen College, Oxford to Hampton Court.
- Charles I was beheaded on a scaffold outside Banqueting House on 30 January 1649; the Rubens ceiling was reportedly one of the last things he saw before execution.
- Lute specialist Elizabeth Kenny showcases the experimental instrumentation of the masques — a brass group for the underworld, a big band of violins for hours of dancing, and a middle group of voices, lutes and viols experimenting with coloratura singing — on her album The Masque of Moments.
Why it matters: Pairing the freshly restored Rubens ceiling with the masque music it was designed to accompany gives audiences a rare full reconstruction of Banqueting House's original 17th-century sensory programme — a moment early-music specialists like Elizabeth Kenny say would have stunned original listeners, and one that ties the venue's musical heritage directly to its surviving architecture.
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