John Blow's pastoral opera Venus and Adonis, the second volume of the Companion Series, presents another key work from the decade of the 1680s, which was an important focus of transition between the pre-Restoration masque and the genres of opera and semi-opera. Long recognised as influential far beyond its modest scope, this delightful work is newly edited by the distinguished 17th-century scholar Bruce Wood, with the original and the revised version of the work printed in parallel text on facing pages - the first time an opera has ever been presented in this way.

The two versions of Blow's Venus and Adonis