A Midsummer Night's Dream, Deutsche Oper, 29 January 2020

Images: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM von Benjamin Britten, Regie: Ted Huffman, Premiere am 26.1.2020, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Bettina Stöß

Oberon – James Hall

Tytania – Siobhan Stagg

Puck – Jami Reid-Quarrell

Theseus – Padraic Rowan

Hippolyta – Davia Bouley

Lysander – Gideon Poppe

Demetrius – Samuel Dale Johnson

Hermia – Karis Tucker

Helena – Jeanine De Bique

Bottom – James Platt

Quince – Timothy Newton

Flute – Michael Kim

Snug – Patrick Guetti

Snout – Matthew Peña

Starveling – Matthew Cossack

Cobweb – Markus Kinch

Peaseblossom – Lora Violetta Haberstock

Mustardseed – Selina Isi

Moth – Chiara Annabelle Feldmann

Ted Huffman (director)

Marsha Ginsberg (set designs)

Annemarie Woods (costumes)

DM Wood (lighting)

Sam Pinkleton (choreography)

Ran Arthur Braun (Puck’s choreography)

Sebastian Hanusa (dramaturgy)

Neil Barry Moss (Spielleitung)

Children’s Choir of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus director: Christian Lindhorst)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

For my final review – unless, which seems unlikely, I manage to write up this evening’s concert before midnight – written as a European citizen, it is perhaps fitting to be writing of an English opera, performed by a German company, conducted by a Scotsman. Given the circumstances, I hope I shall be forgiven if it does not find me at my most inspired, should such a condition even exist. Hand on heart, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not an opera I can bring myself to care for greatly, although – perhaps there is a lesson, or at least an irony, here too – the Berlin audience reacted enthusiastically.

Shakespeare is a dramatist whom composers, at least opera composers, confront at their peril. However clichéd it may be to say this, there is so much music in his verse that setting it can seem superfluous. This is not a rule; there are no such rules. However, I cannot see, or rather hear, what is gained in this case, other than an undeniable creepiness to score and elements of the dramaturgy, which therefore does not seem an unreasonable place for a performance to take as its point of departure. In that, as in everything else, Donald Runnicles’s leadership of the excellent Deutsche Oper Orchestra and Children’s Choir and a fine group of soloists proved just the ticket. Rarely if ever have I heard those recurring slithering glissandi and the weird balances of instrumentation and of instrumentation-vis-à-vis-harmony sound quite so ambiguous, even callous in their indifference to the affairs of mere mortals. This was fairyland music properly unsentimentalised. Moreover, Runnicles communicated the constructivist aspects of Britten’s writing more powerfully than any conductor I can recall. Unsurprisingly, the closer it sounded to The Turn of the Screw, the more interesting the score became. There is only so much anyone can do about the general thinness of writing and a tendency, constructivism notwithstanding, towards diffuse formlessness; insofar as anyone can, Runnicles certainly did. Colour, however, came first and foremost. Those silvery slivers of orchestral moonlight cast, in a fine dramatic paradox, as much shadow as anything else.

The children’s choir had evidently been very well prepared by Christian Lindhorst. Indeed, I had to remind myself afterwards that most of its members would have been singing in a foreign language. A mixed cast included many Anglophone singers, but those who were not, at least in terms of mother tongue, could again hardly be distinguished from those who were. (Singing and musical performance more generally are, of course, international businesses in which British artists have been enabled to flourish by membership of the European Union; goodness knows what will happen next year.) It seems invidious to single out particular performances when all impressed and contributed to a whole that was unquestionably greater than the sum of its parts. I shall limit myself to noting vocal portrayals that, for whatever reason, particularly caught my ear. From James Hall came a warm yet, in the best way, piercing Oberon, channelling Alfred Deller’s memory through something more than imitation; he was well matched by Siobhan Stagg’s spirited, knowing (at least until she was not!) Tytania. Gideon Poppe and Samuel Dale Johnson offered an excellent rutting pair of impetuous youths, well matched and contrasting with their lovers, Karis Tucker and Jeanine De Bique. James Platt’s bluffly comic Bottom led a characterful troupe of rustics.

Ted Huffman’s production gave the impression of good ideas that might fruitfully have been taken further, while shining a clear path through the basic narrative. No one would have stood in any doubt as to who was who, nor as to what was taking place: more, after all, than can often be said in opera staging. I presume the mid-twentieth-century setting – 1940s? – was intended to suggest the period of writing or at least Britten’s life in some respect. It was not, however, immediately clear why we should not then have been closer to 1960. Military uniforms and a suggestion – or was that just me? – of a battlefield as all slept in the forest may have alluded to wartime; if so, without something more, I was rather at a loss as to why and with what consequences. In a programme interview, Huffman referred to Oberon and Tytania fighting over the Indian boy as being akin to the status of Britten and Peter Pears as a childless couple. Once more, if so, nothing more was made of it – and I should hardly have thought of that without reading. Lines delivered in somewhat exaggerated fashion by Jami Reid-Quarrell, Puck was likewise intended, I learned, to represent an outsider. Fair enough, although surely that comes with the territory. There was, however, no doubting Reid-Quarrell’s agility, nor the skill of Ran Arthur Braun’s choreography for him. Quite why Theseus, in a fine vocal and stage display by Padraic Rowan, was drunk, I am afraid I have no idea, but the use of giant puppets for Pyramus and Thisby was charming.

What did I miss? Christopher Alden’s superlative ENO production, far and away the best I have seen, went for the pederastic jugular. Would that more would grasp that thorny nettle with such dramatic verve – be it in this or any other Britten opera. Perhaps, though, I was missing the point. With that, I should probably sign off. See you on the other side, lost in a far darker wood than this, with blue passports, yet nothing in the way of fairyland magic and no ‘break of day’ for at least a couple of decades. If we are lucky.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, English National Opera, 1 March 2018

Coliseum

ENO A Midsummer Night's Dream Trinity Boys Choir (c) Robert Workman

Puck – Miltos Yerolemou

Oberon – Christopher Ainslie
Tytania – Soraya Mafi
Hermia – Clare Presland
Lysander – David Webb
Demetrius – Matthew Durkan
Helena – Eleanor Dennis
Quince – Graeme Danby
Bottom – Joshua Bloom
Starveling – Simon Butteriss
Snout – Timothy Robinson
Flute – Robert Murray
Snug – Jonathan Lemalu
Theseus – Andri Björn Róbertsson
Hippolyta – Emma Carrington
Cobweb – Aman de Silva
Peaseblossom – Lucas Rebato
Mustardseed – Caspar Burman
Moth – Dionysium Sevastakis
 

Robert Carsen (director, lighting)

Emmanuelle Bastet (associate director)
Michael Levine (designs)
Peter van Praet (lighting)
Matthew Bourne, Daisy May Kemp (choreography)


Trinity Boys’ Choir (choirmaster: David Swinson)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Alexander Soddy (conductor)

ENO A Midsummer Night's Dream Soraya Mafi Trinity Boys Choir Joshua Bloom 3 (c) Robert Workman

 

Twenty-two years is a ripe old age for an opera production nowadays. Production styles date quickly; were the idiotic description ‘timeless’ not already shop-soiled before it tripped off the tongue, it soon would be in this world. More fundamentally, production concerns will quickly transform too. Such is the nature of our ever-changing world and thus of the theatre which, in varying degrees of the oblique, holds up a mirror to it. Robert Carsen’s 1995 ENO production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream looks fresher than I should ever have imagined. Visits to houses from France to China notwithstanding, it might have been new at the Coliseum this March. I wonder, never having seen it before, how much has been revised and restored. Much, I suspect: that, surely, is the business of keeping a production, of necessity far from ‘timeless’, in the repertory. And there is certainly a case, without that descending into mere conservatism, for ENO to ‘curate’ its repertory of productions a little more carefully than has sometimes been the case in the recent past.

 

A giant bed delimits much of the action’s limits. Such an image can hardly fail to suggest something sexual, although, by the same token, it would be disingenuous to claim too much that is overt, or even covert, in that respect. There is a sense of childlike, or at least childish (not the same, as Britten of all composers would surely have known) play to the proceedings too: such, after all, is how children, at least in their (alleged) innocence, will speak of a bed. Beyond that, the Coliseum space is used inventively, occasionally spilling out beyond the stage, yet never merely for the sake of it, and never to the extent of the wearily predictable. Lighting (Carsen himself and Peter van Praet) is sensitive, revealingly suggestive of different worlds, different times; likewise Michael Levine’s designs. There is an almost ravishing beauty to the proceedings of this Athenian forest, from which it would take a sterner soul than mine entirely to recoil.

 

I certainly saw no reason to do so, and found the first two acts fairly sped by. As for the third, perhaps the problem is mine. There are people who complain about alleged longueurs in Elektra (!) and Der Rosenkavalier, their complete absence (to me) notwithstanding, who find the play within a play riveting, even hilarious. I am afraid I find it all too straightforwardly a ‘tedious play’. Oh well: it does none of us any harm to try to understand what others see and hear in something – and, if we cannot do so, simply put up with it for a while. In any case, Alexander Soddy led a knowing, sensitive, often truly magical account of the score throughout. Its allusions to other scores, other composers were clear enough without underlining. What seems to me ultimately far more interesting in Britten – and that is doubtless as much a matter of my own preoccupations as anything else – is the way he constructs his music. That generative, impulse was equally to the fore here. Indeed, although I am far from a paid-up admirer of this opera, I found myself, until the third act at least, fascinated at the interplay between local colour and atmosphere, broadly construed, on the one hand, and that rather sinister build-up of mechanistic forces on the other. None of that, of course, could have been achieved without the excellent understanding of the ENO Orchestra.

 

ENO A Midsummer Night's Dream Andri Björn Róbertsson Emma Carrington Matthew Durkan Eleanor Dennis David Webb Clare Presland (c) Robert Workman

The cast proved excellent too, with no weak links: a testimony to fine casting as well as to fine performance. The quartet of lovers – Clare Presland, David Webb, Matthew Durkan, and Eleanor Dennis – was handsome in every sense, as vocally refined as impressive of stage manner. One really felt – which is surely part of the point – that one would have been happy with any conceivable outcome to the madness of the forest, and would not necessarily have minded being included oneself. Christopher Ainslie and Soraya Mafi made for an equally finely sung, nicely contrasted king and queen of the fairies, attended to by a properly rascally Puck (Miltos Yerolemou) and outstanding Trinity Boys’ Choir. The rustics and temporal monarchs all had much to offer too. Were I to name them here, I should simply be repeating the cast list above. This was the sort of company performance for which ENO used to be renowned; I hope that it will now continue to be so.

 

ENO A Midsummer Night's Dream Christopher Ainslie

Miltos Yerolemou 3 (c) Robert Workman

And yet, and yet… you may have felt a ‘but’ coming. If so, your instincts did not err. For Carsen’s production has returned at the expense of Christopher Alden’s brilliant 2011 staging, quite the best I have seen. It did what those of us less suffocated by the post-Britten English musical establishment, more open – like the young Britten, aspirant pupil of Berg – to artistic developments beyond these grey shores, would have thought obvious, yet seemingly no one had dared previously attempt. The sexual darkness not only of Britten’s past and present, but also of this work, was tackled head on, in a boys’ school setting that left one in no doubt there could be no happy endings here. By contrast, chez Carsen – and however unfair the retrospective comparison – everything is a little too well-ordered in its fantasy, a little too blithe in its heteronormativity, a little too distant from shadows of power and the abuses that accompany it.

 

There is no reason in principle, of course, why there should not be room for both approaches, and indeed for many more. Whether, however, we should be papering over awkward cracks specifically now, in the age of #metoo, the Jimmys Savile and Levine, et al. is another question. I never cease to be amazed quite how lightly Britten gets off in this respect, but that doubtless tells its own story or stories. Not that I am suggesting we need necessarily always sit in judgement: a large part, after all, of the role of drama is to explore, to tease out. A dramatic work is neither a court case nor a treatise. There is, though, surely far more to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and its ideological framework than is acknowledged here. I hope the decision not to revive Alden was not taken because ‘traditionalists’ and those in positions of power – often one and the same – were ‘offended’, or running scared. Perhaps, then, next time, might we return to Alden, or see something with insights altogether new?

 

Hänsel und Gretel, Co-Opera Co., 23 August 2012

John McIntosh Theatre, London Oratory School

 

Gretel – Llio Evans

Hänsel – Susanne Holmes

Mother, Witch – Shuna Sendall

Father – Stephen John Svanholm

Sandman, Dew Fairy – Rahel Moore

 

James Bonas (director)

Carl Davies (designs)

Paul J Need (lighting)

Katie Higgins (costumes)

 

Co-Opera Co. Orchestra

Stephen Higgins (conductor)

 

After a couple of weeks taking in the delights and challenges of Salzburg and Bayreuth, I might well have become a little jaded. Not a bit of it, and not least on account of this delightful performance of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (sung here in English) by the enterprising Co-Opera Co. Even my prejudice, or considered opinion (delete as applicable), against opera in translation wilted away, though I remain some way from ever wishing to hear Figaro in German again, save for Furtwängler. David Pountney’s lively, intelligently unfaithful translation suited occasion and production to a tee, and, wonder of wonders, one could hear almost every word of it too.

 

I should also have been sceptical about the prospect of a reduced orchestration. Even if the orchestra took a little while to settle down – the Overture had its rocky moments – taken as a whole, this proved quite a treat. One does not expect the Staatskapelle Dresden, nor Sir Colin Davis, in such circumstances, but there were genuine compensations, the woodwind in particular shining, and inner parts emerging as if from a Mozart serenade. Stephen Higgins shaped Humperdinck’s lovable score with care and wisdom; we were not only in a safe pair of hands, but one with a sense of theatre too. If, in the abstract, I think of the score as a little too derivative, its Meistersinger-isms (with no apology for the near-Teutonism) verging upon plagiarism, in performance it rarely fails to lift the spirits and certainly did not fail to do so on this occasion. I was surprised, moreover, that I really did not miss the chorus at all; instead I was able to hear more of the orchestra and experience the relevant moments as if they were further ‘pantomimes’.

 

James Bonas’s production worked extremely well, set in the austerity – sound familiar? – of that ghastly decade, the 1950s. The Mother’s housewife get-up, the washing on the lines, the hollowness of ‘family values’, and of course the very real danger of child abuse therein, were present in our dramatic experience without being unduly hammered home. There was a genuinely chilling moment, however, when the Witch showed pictures of missing children on an overhead projector. Fairy tales, as everyone should know but a surprising number refuse to recognise, are anything but saccharine, and that becomes doubly so with the Brothers Grimm. The appearance of her house offered a genuine coup de théâtre, every aspect of the staging both imaginative and resourceful.

 

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of Co-Opera Co., however, is the opportunity it provides for young singers, both in its workshops, graced by the likes of Sir Thomas Allen, the late Philip Langridge, Janis Kelly, Ryland Davies, et al., and in actual performances. I was especially taken by the rich tones of both Shuna Sendall as Mother and Witch and Rahel Moore, doubling up as Sandman and Dew Fairy. Both can act splendidly too, doubtless testament to intensive work from the company. Llio Evans and Susanne Holmes made a convincing, complementary sibling pair of girl and boy, whilst Stephen John Svanholm relished the comic side of his role as their father.

 

Future Co-Opera Co. Performances are scheduled for Wolverhampton, Croydon, Bury St Edmunds, Darlington, Wellingborough, Blackpool, Epsom, Staplehurst, Buxton, Manchester (RNCM), Yeovil, and Hertford: not all offering Hansel and Gretel, for Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute are on offer too. Those interested in assisting the excellent work of Co-Opera Co., whether financially, for instance by contributing to the Philip Langridge Bursary Fund or becoming a friend, or simply by attending performances, should e-mail Kate Flowers, the company's artistic director, at info@co-opera-co.org, or visit the website, https://www.co-opera-co.org.

 

ENO, A Midsummer Night's Dream: other reviews

The following have struck me as interesting in their various ways. Some, which I shall not bother to mention, seem depressingly similar to the angry booing from the stalls. I may update this... (Here, meanwhile, is a link to my review.)

Michael White (Telegraph)
Classical Iconoclast
Simon Thomas (whatsonstage.com)
David Nice (The Arts Desk)
Barry Millington (Evening Standard)
Edward Seckerson (Independent)
Mark Ronan's Theatre Reviews
Peter Reed (Classical Source)
Mark Valencia (also Classical Source)
George's Musings
Fiona Maddocks (Observer)
Andrew Clark (Financial Times)

A Midsummer Night's Dream, English National Opera, 19 May 2011

 The Coliseum

Images: Alastair Muir (click to enlarge)
The eve of the wedding...

 
Oberon – William Towers
Bottom – Sir Willard White
Tytania – Anna Christy
Lysander – Allan Clayton
Demetrius – Benedict Nelson
Theseus – Paul Whelan
Puck – Jamie Manton
Helena – Kate Valentine
Hermia – Tamara Gura
Flute – Michael Colvin
Snug – Grame Danby
Snout – Peter van Hulle
Starveling – Simon Butteriss
Quince – Jonathan Veira
Cobweb - Alexander Lee
Peaseblossom - Luke Saint
Mustardseed - Luke Dugan
Moth - Dominic O'Donnell
Changeling boy - Dominic Williams
Hippolyta - Catherine Young


Christopher Alden (director)
Charles Edwards (set designs)
Sue Wilmington (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)

Boys of Trinity School, Croydon (chorus master: David Swenson)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Leo Hussain (conductor)

Iestyn Davies (Oberon) and
Anna Christy (Tytania)

ENO’s superlative Return of Ulysses has been my operatic highlight of the season so far; This Midsummer Night’s Dream in many respects comes close: such a relief after the well-nigh unwatchable Damnation of Faust recently endured. But this was not easy ‘relief’, Christopher Alden’s production proving intent on exploring the darker side of Britten and his work. It was telling that the discomfort of a certain section of the audience manifested itself in the unpardonable boorishness of booing the production team. Reactionaries who might just about have reconciled themselves to Britten’s music – forget Birtwistle... – did not want their ‘enjoyment’ ruined by something that went beyond kitschy tales from the Athenian woods. For those with ears to listen, as well as eyes to see, an opera that has its weaknesses emerged stronger and, a signal achievement this, managed both to chill the spine and to elicit genuine comedy. How many times has one previously consulted a watch during the Tedious Brief Scene of Pyramus and Thisbe? Not on this occasion. Excellent personal direction and acting, not least from Sir Willard White’s Bottom, made that scene a genuine joy, focusing attention on Britten’s clever parodies, which thereby emerged as more than merely clever (often a danger with this particular composer).

That said, the darkness is really the thing. Alden daringly – and no, I am not using the word ‘ironically’ – reimagines the opera in terms of a mid-twentieth-century boys’ school. I immediately thought of Britten’s own – and Auden’s – Gresham’s, a connection reinforced both by Charles Edwards’s superb set designs and a mysterious figure strolling around, observing, and to a certain extent participating, suggestive of Britten himself. (More of that figure anon.) Just in case one were in any doubt, the inscription above the school entrance forbiddingly – invitingly for some? – reads ‘BOYS’. The fairies are the younger boys, with Puck an older, apparently knowing member of the community. Oberon and Titania are an especially twisted master and mistress, free with their favours, clearly in competition for the favour of their charges. A nice touch is Titania’s schoolmarmishly wooden beating time for the fairy choruses. When Puck gets things wrong, he is subjected to a spanking by his master Oberon, who may already have transferred his affections to the Indian Boy. Clearly Puck will have to redouble his efforts, though his relationship to the Britten-like figure seems to grant him extra kudos. Lysander and Hermia explore their sexual awakening behind the dustbins, whilst the sadistic rejection of Helena by Demetrius and her masochistic response are especially cutting and credible, given his status as a highly popular member of the rugby team. Sue Wilmington’s costumes, here and elsewhere, strike just the right note. One can quibble, no doubt, about what the girls are doing there at all, but their presence does not really jar, and girls have a habit of sneaking in to such environments, wanted or otherwise. During their explorations, the boys are initially as inclined to play with each other, similarly the girls, as old habits die hard. The magic, when it comes, is all, or at least mostly, to be attributed to whatever it is that Oberon is smoking. Puck passes around the cigarette to devastating effect. It may sound contrived, but it really works on stage. And he threatens to set the entire school ablaze at the end of the second act.

Paul Whelan (Theseus) and Jamie Manton (Puck)

Finally, the observer, himself earlier subjected to sado-masochistic tying up by Puck, is revealed to be the Duke, returned to his old school on the eve of his wedding and now again following the (play) reception. One often wonders, whether in Shakespeare or Britten, quite what the nature of his role should be: not here, for we were in for another turn of the screw. This is a tormented man, turned tormentor, who, following the rustics’ departure, manages to free himself from his respectable, echt-1950’s wife, returns to the school to revisit Puck, with whom he has earlier shared his neck-ties (a bond, it seems, born of a gift, or perhaps of identity). Puck, whom one might expect now to be triumphant, appears broken, perhaps literally. The abuse, and abuse it undoubtedly it is, has taken its toll. Rather than force himself upon the boy again, the Duke, perhaps chastened, as a Puck himself in later life, slinks away. Punk’s final words are defiant, but we know that this boy will remain troubled.

The cast entered into this scenario with gusto. Indeed, one had the real sense of a company performance, and even if it were not so in the strictest sense, it is surely no coincidence that many of these artists have worked together before. Iestyn Davies, sadly, was ailing, similarly his understudy Iestyn Morris, so Davies acted the role of Oberon, whilst Will Towers sang from the side of the stage. With that performance, Towers has doubtless ensured himself of a major role of his own at ENO before long, with a hauntingly beautiful rendition that never once lapsed into stereotypical hooting. (I cannot say the same for a certain other, highly celebrated counter-tenor, whom I heard a few years ago at Glyndebourne.) Allan Clayton was also, we were told, suffering from an infection, but one would barely have known: his Lysander remained an impressive portrayal. Benedict Nelson’s Demetrius was full of youthful masculine swagger, which yet retained a propensity, understated though it may have been, to equally youthful self-doubt. Tamara Gura and Kate Valentine made an impressive pair of female lovers. White’s excellent Bottom, blessed by a genuinely comic vocal delivery I have not heard in this artist before, was complemented by an excellent oddball assortment of rustics, from whom Michael Colvin’s Flute should be considered first amongst equals. The Donizetti parody truly hit home. Paul Whelan, whom I previously admired as Claggart in Glyndebourne’s Billy Budd, proved a haunted and haunting Theseus: this Duke will linger long in the mind. Jamie Manton was equally impressive as Puck, his adolescent cockiness twisted into something almost too painful to watch; memories of Manton’s fine performance will doubtless prove equally difficult to dispel. Magic, as the production suggested, only takes one so far: to treat it is a refuge from reality is at best irresponsible.


Underpinning this real company success were the excellent contributions of Leo Hussain and the ENO Orchestra. Hussain, making his ENO debut, conducted as if he were a knight of the realm, so readily did Britten’s style and structure speak from his baton. One would not have been surprised to discover that it was a Sir Colin, or a late Sir Charles, save that neither of those conductors, I suspect, would have warmed to Alden’s production. Magic was there: those harps, the woodwind, the slithering fairy-music. We were left in no doubt, however, that malevolence was always present too. (What, after all, is a forest? It is hardly a place of straightforward comfort. Think of Hansel and Gretel.) Above all, and this is crucial in music that can otherwise tend to meander, Britten’s score was shown to be constructed. The booers would doubtless have preferred not to be reminded of Britten’s twelve-note experimentation, but so much the worse for them. Boys from Trinity School, Croydon, proved impressive too, clearly well coached by their Director of Music, David Swinson.

It was an interesting coincidence upon returning home from the Coliseum last night, to post a quick summary on Twitter, to see the name of Melanie Phillips ‘trending’ there. (Reader: if you do not know who she is, may you at all costs strive to retain your blissful ignorance. Suffice it to say, that she is a ‘commentator’ to the humourless, far right fringe even of the rabid, petit bourgeois bigotry that infests the Daily Mail, Britain’s answer to Der Stürmer, both then and now. To its eternal discredit, The Spectator offers her a platform upon its website too.) It appears that Ms Phillips had wound up – and she appears to mean what she says – a good section of the television audience for BBC television’s Question Time, doubtless by spitting and cursing upon the slightest semblance of human charity. One can well imagine how she and her readers would have reacted to this production: not a justification in itself, but not a bad sign either. As Germaine Greer has pointed out, the obsession amongst large sections of our society with paedophilia reflects their own paedophilia: witness the photographic reproductions of missing children, especially girls, whereas for those of us not interested, we are simply not interested and should prefer to hear about something else (our ruling class desperately trying to keep it from us). They want to ‘hear all about it’ but react violently when their motives are questioned, let alone examined, hence the mittelständisch booing. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual, as we shall be reminded when the Royal Opera revives Peter Grimes next month. ENO would also seem to have set the scene very nicely for Nico Muhly’s Two Boys, from which I shall also report in late June.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Royal College of Music, 1 July 2009

(Images copyright: Chris Christodoulou)

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Oberon – Christopher Lowrey
Tytania – Colette Boushell
Puck – Luke Williams
Lysander – John McMunn
Demetrius – Philip Tebb
Hermia – Anna Huntley
Helena – Madeleine Pierard
Bottom – Jimmy Holiday
Quince – Ross McInroy
Flute – Alistair Digges
Snug – David Milner Pearce
Snout – Alex Vearey Roberts
Starveling – Alex Duliba
Hippolyta – Rosie Aldridge
Theseus – David Hansford
Peaseblossom – Ben Richardson
Cobweb – Crispin Lord
Moth – Christopher O’Brien
Mustardseed – Joe Brandon
Indian Boy – James Dugan

Ian Judge (director)
Mark Doubleday (lighting)

Trinity Boys Choir
Royal College of Music Orchestra
Michael Rosewell (conductor)

I am no paid-up – or even subscription-lapsed – member of the Benjamin Britten fan club, having often, heretically, admired him more as a pianist and conductor than as a composer, and at least as often often suspected that his near-stratospheric critical esteem in this country is owed as much to his nationality as to anything else. (The English, stung by the dearth of anything worth listening to between Purcell and Elgar, seem especially prone to such strange nationalism. ‘We’ have plenty of great music, just not from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.) Peter Grimes, for instance, has always struck me as far better in terms of its plot than its music, though The Turn of the Screw is a considerably finer work in both respects. Yet, fresh from Garsington’s vapid if enjoyable Mirandolina (Martinů), I realised once again that, in the theatre and in a winning performance, the sceptic in me could be quietened. So long as absurd claims are not made for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it emerges – and certainly emerged at the Royal College of Music – as a more substantial work than many that continue to hold the operatic stage.

Ian Judge has directed a great deal of Shakespeare, both for the Royal Shakespeare Company and elsewhere. His experience shows in his familiarity with the text – and also in alertness to its necessary shortening. (Britten and Peter Pears themselves fashioned the libretto.) The stage is formed by a black disc, whose lighting (Mark Doubleday) indicates the world in which the action is taking place. The moon is nearer, or at any rate larger, when we are purely in the realm of the fairies, more distant for the human world. The costumes and acting – here again Judge’s directorial experience shows – indicate that the fairies are far from a pretty, benign presence. There is at least a twist of nastiness to their punk Elizabethan look, quite apposite since Shakespeare and Britten make it abundantly clear that their mischief is far from merely amusing; lives could be wrecked here – and almost are. The composer is not so backward-looking as some of his less helpful advocates would have him, and it is to Judge’s and the musicians’ credit that they both appreciate and project that. After all, mind-altering - and rather more than mind-altering in the case of Bottom – substances are being forced upon the characters.

There were a few occasions when the relatively small size of the Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra was apparent, but for the most part it sounded well suited to the acoustic, swelling to a glorious sound in the mock-Romantic music and exhibiting a due sense of the unsettled to other passages. Michael Rosewell has long been an advocate of Britten’s music. There was never any doubt that the score was in safe hands here; indeed, forgetting about hands, it was clearly in his head rather than vice versa. Britten’s music tends to sound strongest when it is – and sounds – most ‘constructed’. Rosewell and his players helped one to appreciate the generative quality of the twelve-note writing – again, the more conservative Britten devotees would surely be horrified to be made aware of this – without neglecting or unduly opposing the magic in the rest of the score. If I became a little tired of certain aspects of the latter – does the composer really need to use the harp quite so often? – then that is no fault of the performance. And the contribution from the Trinity Boys Choir, which has given more than 150 performances of this work, was as excellent as one might have expected from such a figure. The treble voice, both solo and choral, is of great importance to Britten; these young musicians did not fail him. They were rather good actors too, not least in terms of their movement skills.

There was a fine sense of ensemble from the rest of the cast, for which honours should doubtless be shared between them, the director, and the conductor. Not all contributions were at the same level, but none was truly disappointed, which is more than one can often say for professional houses. Christopher Lowrey as Oberon reminded us that a counter-tenor need not sound merely fey; the voice, as various composers from Britten, to Goehr, to Birtwistle, have shown, can exhibit an otherworldly strength, as it did here. Luke Williams was the punkest of the fairies as Puck. Normally a baritone, here he was given full rein to display his spoken acting abilities; I am not sure one would have guessed that he is primarily a singer. John McMunn and Madeleine Pierard were the strongest of the lovers, as Lysander and Helena respectively, although Philip Tebb’s Demetrius was probably more strongly acted. Jimmy Holliday’s Bottom was a splendid parody of the over-bearing members of an amateur dramatics society, with the other Rustics working well together. If Alistair Digges’s Flute had seemed a little too light earlier on, the third act play of Pyramus and Thisby signalled a considerably stronger performance, the humour proving quite contagious amongst his colleagues. I was not sure why Alex Duliba’s Starveling was required to carry a (real) dog wherever he went, but it did no particular harm. Rosie Aldridge’s duly regal Hippolyta made one wish her part were more extensive, whilst David Hansford, who had stepped in ‘at exceptionally late notice’ as Theseus, would doubtless have made a surer impression in more propitious circumstances. Diction was not always what it might have been, especially, though not exclusively, from Pierard and Anna Huntley’s Hermia. This is clearly something on which the young cast should work, since the problem would be magnified in a larger theatre than this. Nevertheless, the cast should be applauded for a high quality of performance throughout – and not just, or sometimes even primarily, in vocal terms.