A Midsummer Night's Dream

Synopsis

Following the success of recent stagings of Britten’s Peter Grimes and The Turn of the Screw, both of which won South Bank Show Awards, ENO is proud to present an exciting new production of Britten’s operatic homage to Shakespeare’s much-loved play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

After his Olivier Award-winning Partenope for the Company, as well as an acclaimed The Makropulos Case, director Christopher Alden returns to ENO for what promises to be an unforgettable theatrical experience.

Leo Hussain conducts Britten’s richly romantic and fantastical score.

A dream cast includes Anna Christy, who recently transfixed audiences in the title role in ENO’s Lucia di Lammermoor as Tytania, the outstanding Iestyn Davies as Oberon and the great bass baritone Sir Willard White as Bottom.

Our Review:

20 May 2011

Britten and boys.  Boys and Britten. It’s an unavoidable facet of the composer’s  life and works these days and it lies at the heart of  Christopher Alden’s radical reappraisal of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, just as the word “Boys” itself sits plump in the middle of Charles Edwards’s grey, run-down public school set.

There’s a whole list of reasons that some people are going to hate this production.  Alden strips the work of glamour, magic, humour and any sense of whimsy.  The Elizabethan pastoral idea of nature as a palliative to metropolitan problems doesn’t get a look in.

The slow-moving score is brought to a low, meditative level in the hands of Leo Hussain.  It will stretch the attention of many but immerses the active listener in the delicate beauties of Britten’s subtlest operatic music without the flouncy distractions of more traditional approaches.  It’s a r...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

Suzanne Scott - 28 June 2011:

I agree with Gareth James. I saw the original production at the ROH in 1961, and was enraptured by both the music and the set designs, which truly complemented it. While this was an interesting and disquieting production, I found the concept heavyhanded, and had to close my eyes suring best-loved passages. ...

Read more and add your own review

Related Whatsonstage.com Articles

WOS Radio: Edward Seckerson Talks to Iestyn Davies More»