ENO - A Midsummer Nightmare

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

I went to the opening night of ENO's new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream yesterday. Director Christopher Alden has set it in the 1950s/60s, contemporary to the opera's composition, in a school, with Oberon a kiddy-fiddling teacher, Puck one of his vicitims who - as a grown up 'Theseus' on the eve of his wedding - revisits to relive the horrors of his schooldays.

Thankfully, I wasn't reviewing, but here's the assessment/ savaging by our critic: http://tinyurl.com/SJTMND

Musically, some strong performances. Unfortunately, Iestyn Davies was unable to sing, so mimed the role while William Towers sang from the side.

It's certainly one to divide the critics - Andrew Clements in the Grauniad giving it a hugely impressive 5 stars - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011...s-dream-review
while Michael White in the Torygraph sums it up rather well, I feel: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture...nd-i-hated-it/

[Curalach]

Your reviewer certainly doesn't miss and hit the wall!! Well done him.

[Flosshilde]

Nothing to do with the production, but I liked the puff that "Michael White was voted Britain’s least boring music critic by listeners of Classic FM."

He actually sounded more enthusiastic - or gave a better 'explanation' - about the production than the Guardian crit did.

[french frank]

He actually sounded more enthusiastic - or gave a better 'explanation' - about the production than the Guardian crit did.

He did. It was a very fair review, and useful in that it managed to give readers a very good idea, like it or hate it, of what they were in for if they were going.

With a limited number of seats available and a limited number of performances, 'infamous' productions can presumably do reasonably well at the box office - unfortunately, since it means there's less incentive for companies to avoid them in favour of less sensationalist productions.

[amateur51]

Let me be clear from the start that I have not seen this production and from the reviews I have read, I am not much inclined to do so ...

IGI very fairly directs us to Michael White's review in the Telegraph, which makes interesting reading.

White writes:

'The cruelty is in the identification between Oberon the stealthy paedophile and Britten the boy-lover. It’s done cleverly and tactfully, with no representation of physical abuse apart from a caning session: Puck’s trauma is that, having been picked out as Oberon’s favourite, he is then passed over. And that, we know, is what happened with Britten and his boys. There’s no evidence that he physically abused them, so in that sense he did them no harm. Quite the opposite. But he did, in modern parlance, “groom” them. He did burden them with the responsibility of adult love. And then, when they got older, he lost interest – leaving them confused and upset, as happens to Puck in this show.'

I think this is a tad too simplistic. All boys have favourites, as all girls do, but because we're boys we can't be as demonstrative about our favourites as girls can, we're told. And so sometimes things get bottled up, twisted and repressed and adult of the child is sometimes rendered confused. As Miles sings in 'The Turn of The Screw'

"I am bad, I am bad - aren't I?'

Part of the problem we face today is that some of these feelings in certain situations are labelled 'paedophile' with negative connotations, which is not unreasonable when it is associated with physical and sexual abuse, of course.

However we should remember that for Britten's internal psychological boy,the very creative part of much of his life, the maturing of his boy friends (no hyphen) into young manhood is also in a particular sense a loss, a betrayal. And those who experience betrayal often become apparently callous.

We can't all be as knowing, as reasonable and as kind as Marie Therese.

[Mary Chambers]

I haven't seen it, either, but my initial reaction is a weary sigh.

I also wonder just how much Alden, or some of the critics, really know about Britten.

[Flosshilde]

Does one need an intimate knowledge of a composer to produce his (or her) operas? It can be a hindrance rather than a help - encouraging the sort of psychological production that is the subject of this thread - too much focus on the composer & not enough on the work.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I haven't seen it, but it sounds very much to be one of those productions in which the producer is desperate to be noticed, and wants to appear more important than the music/drama itself. Not only are such people utterly pathetic, but it's also extremely sad that people like that are chosen when there are so many truly capable producers around.

[ardcarp]

Well, I haven't seen it either, but it would appear the Opera Britannia crit (suggesting the Britten-Pears Foundation ought to take the Coliseum to court) would have been my reaction too. I love this work (and have seen Iestyn perform Oberon on a different occasion...pity about his indisposition, but Will Towers has a great voice) but what I don't understand is how they did all this 20th cent public school/paedophile twaddle with Shakespeare's text. Britten was sometimes criticised for his choice of librettists, but his decision to use actual words from the play (extracts chosen I believe by himself and Pears) was the MAIN FEATURE of his conception of this work. Sticking plays and operas in different time-warps is very much the fashion (as is the obsession with paedophilia) and sometimes it works, but if there were any opera that NEEDS its originally intended setting, this is it. I don't think I'll be bothering to see it.