Love & Death: Venus and Adonis by John Blow
Venus & Adonis is the only stage work of the Restoration composer John Blow. A masque ‘written for the entertainment of the King’, the work was performed at Court in sometime in the early 1680s. The cast included the King’s daughter Lady Mary Tudor as Cupid, and her mother, Mary Davis, playing the part of Venus. The myth tells the story of Venus, who, pierced with Cupid’s arrow, falls in love with Adonis. She warns him of the danger of the hunt, but he ignores her and is gored by the boar.