A Midsummer Night's Dream..on 21st Dec !!

[Mary Chambers]

And the deeply, deeply toe-curling interview with Titania - all about how shy she was, and how did she manage to sing so high?!! FGS............

Indeed! Extraordinary.

[Black Swan]

Lot's of interesting comments. I am hoping that the MET might have recorded it for release on DVD. I would like to have the opera on DVD and there is very little available also, I would love to see Iestyn in the role.

[ardcarp]

I have no DVDs alas, but I have the 'original' boxed set of LPs (Britten conducting, Deller as Oberon) and I saw the first production (in person) when Bowman took over the role. I also saw it recently done by English Touring Opera with Jonathan Peter Kenny as Oberon. I'm not sure if any of these are available on DVD.

[Black Swan]

Ardcarp,

Thanks, I saw the Opera North Production this fall as part of their Festival of Britain.
I will check the River People for any DVD.

[bluestateprommer]

I'm interested in the way there seems to be a decision to do the work in English rather than American. I realise that there's a good scattering of true Brits in the cast, but also apparently plenty of Statesiders working to suppress their native twang.

Well, in the Santa Fe Opera production last week of BB's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the last Brit standing in the cast, conductor Harry Bicket in the pit notwithstanding, was Iestyn Davies, so no concerns about accents there. The rest of the cast was American, to be sure, but several singers did add elements of what I perceive to be British English diction, e.g. rolled r's, w/o being too self-conscious about it. In particular, Nicholas Brownlee had a lot of fun in that sense, as Nick Bottom. NB was again subbing for Ashley Riches, just as he subbed for AR in Le nozze di Figaro. The director, Netia Jones, didn't seem to "enforce" any sort of English accents-only rule, despite herself being from the UK.

NJ's staging struck me as quite imaginative and well-produced. She incorporated a large circle for the moon on which various images were projected. I can quibble with some of the more obvious choices of images n terms of nitpicking. On the positive side, she gets the fairies to appear very effectively via mini-trap doors, and uses, of all things, a trampoline to great and appropriately funny effect, when various rustics or parties in the quartet of young lovers take tumbles, or more athletically, when Reed Luplau as Puck bounces around and maneuvers around the stage. Luplau works to much better effect here than the artistic disaster of Oscar at Santa Fe Opera in 2013, where he danced the role of Alfred Douglas/Bosie (but I digress). Another detail of NJ's staging was her handling of the Tytania/Oberon scene after the spell is lifted from her eyes, with a quite strong sense from Erin Morley's Tytania that she did not appreciate at all getting taken for a ride.

I would respectfully dissent from others' opinions here on the "accessibility" of the music, as, IMHO, it lacks sweeping big tunes that are more present in the more outgoing and extrovert operasike Peter Grimes and Billy Budd. I had to go to my car at the Act 1 intermission, and saw one guy leave after Act 1. His loss, of course. Also, in fairness, friends in the opera orchestra do tremendously appreciate the quality and craft of Britten's writing, while also noting that it really keeps them on their toes. The district sound-worlds of each character level come through very well indeed, expertly guided by Harry B., of course. As with Figaro, string players, harpists, percussion, and keyboardist were all masked.

This was also Santa Fe Opera's first-ever production of BB's AMND. They did themselves and the opera proud.