A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten; Robert Carsen, director. Opera Philadelphia through February 17, 2019.
This is the most entertaining production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I’ve ever seen, as a play or as an opera, in a theater, opera house or on film.
For fantasy and comedy this concept can’t be beat, even though there’s merit in a dark, dangerous alternative interpretation of the story. Opera Philadelphia has achieved a coup by bringing this beautiful creation to the American continent.
It is North America’s first appearance of a production by the Canadian director Robert Carsen, which had its debut at the 1991 Aix-en-Provence Festival. It includes choreography by Matthew Bourne, who has gone on to an illustrious career, and is supervised by Carsen’s original collaborator Emmanuelle Bastet.
While the Shakespeare play has plenty of fans, Benjamin Britten’s music adds to the magic, to the comedy, and to the romance. It eliminates any impediment caused by the Elizabethan English, as it communicates with a universal language of music, dance and fantasy.
Britten’s score is ingenious, full of clever sonorities, but never calls attention to itself. For instance, there’s lots of tympani, and numerous brass fanfares, but they’re at low volume so they don’t compete with the voices. Especially lovely are the playful glissandi and the images of soft winds rustling through the trees (in this case unseen.) Corrado Rovaris does a superb job of subtly conducting the orchestra.
Michael Levine’s stage design is simple and uncluttered, with wide swaths of green and blue. The color scheme carries over to the costumes and bedspreads, and even the hair color of the men, women and boys. A moon is omnipresent, in various positions, and horizons at different levels. There are no trees. Beds appear which suggest dreaming more than sexuality.
This opera version of Midsummer includes a twenty-person boys’ chorus, directed by Elizabeth Braden, and an acrobatic actor as Puck who does no singing. Miltos Yerolemou delivers Shakespeare’s rhyming couplets as if Puck is directing the action. The diminutive Yerolemou has a picturesque eccentric way of walking and his double-takes and pratfalls are funny, avoiding excess.
Shakespeare’s comedy is much beloved, but — let’s face the awkward truth — there are many theater-goers who are confused by the entanglements of Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, Helena, Oberon, Titania, Theseus and Hippolyta. Folks come and ask me to explain who is whom. This version minimizes all that and focuses more on the antics of the rustic craftsmen who perform the play-within-the-play.
While the opera centers on the comedic more than on the romances of the plethora of Shakespeare’s characters, this opera gives us the most gorgeous love scene in all of Britten’s works, by Oberon and Tytania after they patch up their argument. Never has Britten written such dulcet music for lovers of any gender. This male-female romance is especially notable because the composer had a long relationship with Peter Pears, and W. H. Auden scolded Britten for his “attraction to thin-as-a-board juvenile boys.”
The cast is evenly matched from top to Bottom, if you’ll excuse the bad pun. All are excellent: baritone Matthew Rose (Bottom), countertenor Tim Mead (Oberon), soprano Anna Christy (Tytania), mezzo Siena Licht Miller (Hermia), tenor Brenton Ryan (Lysander), soprano Georgia Jarman (Helena), baritone Johnathan McCullough (Demetrius), bass-baritone Evan Hughes (Theseus), mezzo Allyson McHardy (Hippolyta) plus Patrick Guetti, Miles Mykkanen, George Somerville, Zachary Altman, Brent Michael Smith, Jack Cellucci, Timothy O’Connor, Evan Schaffer and Payton Owens.
Note about spelling: Britten changed Shakespeare’s spelling of Titania to Tytania to indicate a long first vowel.
Note to those who fear men who sound like sopranos: The tessitura of the role of Oberon is relatively low for a countertenor, and Mead has a nice warm tone.
This review was originally published in the international publication for professionals, The Opera Critic