I have a free morning and I wanted to retrace with you this dream that is happening to me...
These days I am at the Ponchielli in Cremona rehearsing Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", an opera from 1960 that will be one of my first major productions as a soloist. Regardless of the professional moment, and the fact that I hope this means a turning point in my personal career, Britten is an author whom I have sought out and found with tenacity throughout my life. I was supposed to sing him during my diploma (but it didn't happen), he was the subject of my undergraduate thesis in musicology, he was the subject of one of my little articles on gender studies (never published...), and I have studied a long series of his arias and pieces (never sung). In this continuous chasing, I finally found him. And so I wanted to share the thing a little bit.
The opera's libretto consists of an extensively cut text from the Shakespearean comedy. No additions, only cuts, so everything that is sung is 17th-century English. Normally this type of opera is called "Literatur Oper", meaning a musical setting of an original authorial text not originally conceived as a musical libretto. There are interesting consequences from a musical point of view, often resulting from the fact that Shakespeare's words are super musical and their musical setting relates to them in different ways. There isn't always fusion; it is like a Bach Chorale in which the music has an hermeneutic role towards the pre-existing text.
I don't want to analyze the whole opera, though, otherwise I would never finish. Above all, I want to tempt you with the listening of some fascinating moments.
The plot is a bit labyrinthine.
Oberon (countertenor), King of the fairies, is angry with Titania (soprano), Queen of the fairies, for having taken a child from him, whom he wanted to make his page (...). To plan a revenge, Oberon sends Puck (actor) in search of a magic flower.
In Oberon's woods, there are also two couples: Lysander (tenor) and Hermia (mezzo-soprano), lovers on the run to get married. But also Demetrius (baritone), Hermia's legitimate fiancé, and Helena (soprano), Demetrius's ex-girlfriend, rejected by him and still deeply in love. All four fall asleep in the woods. Oberon wants to resolve the situation by making Demetrius fall in love with Helena, but Puck messes things up and does the opposite, making Lysander fall in love with Helena... resulting in a massive brawl.
In parallel, a group of artisans gathers in the woods to rehearse a theatrical piece :-) Peter Quince (bass) manages the matter, Bottom (baritone) and Flute (tenor) will be Pyramus and Thisbe respectively (so Flute will sing as a woman), and the other three, Snout (tenor), Starveling (baritone), and Snug (bass) will play absurd supporting roles (Snout the wall, Starveling the moonlight, and Snug the lion). While they are rehearsing, Puck decides as a joke to make a donkey's head sprout from Bottom's neck and to use this new strange monster to avenge his King against the Queen. With the famous magic flower, he will make Titania fall in love with Donkey-Bottom. After quite a few lovely things happen, Titania will return the stolen child to Oberon and Puck will resolve all the problems, waking the Fairy Queen from her beastly love dream, succeeding in making Demetrius fall in love with Helena and returning Lysander's love to Hermia. And by removing the donkey head from Bottom, he will return to playing the role of Pyramus in the tragedy with the artisans.
The staging of the tragicomedy will take place before the rulers of Athens, Theseus (bass) and Hippolyta (contralto), in a continuous series of gags that encompass this wonderful meta-theatrical moral: that every tragedy is a comedy and every comedy a tragedy, that theater is a magical dream. In the end, everyone goes to bed, cradled by the notes of the fairy chorus (boy sopranos/white voices, who are present throughout the opera).
Some notable musical characteristics: the opera is non-tonal, although very melodic, at some points (and very little, at others).
The role of Oberon was written for the first and most famous countertenor in history, Alfred Deller, and it is the first opera role explicitly written for countertenor in history (though the discussion could be more complicated than that). The orchestration is unique; there are many "fairy" instruments like harps and celesta that emerge especially with Oberon and the fairies; the artisans, on the other hand, are characterized by brass and bassoon.
Let's begin with the listening.
Oberon's aria is one of the most beautiful things written by Britten. The trumpet at the beginning is Puck's call. From there on, the accompaniment recalls the lute accompaniment of Purcell's arias.
And Titania's aria "Come on a roundel", in which you can also hear the chorus of boy sopranos and its modal scale which remains continuous throughout the opera. Below, you can also hear the glissandi of the strings, another [thing]
an element always present in the score.
Let's skip all the middle parts and go to the magnificent quartet at the end of the second act, when the four lovers wake up and discover they have been released from various spells (only one, in fact). The brass fanfare tells us that soon everyone will go to the court of Theseus and Hippolyta in Athens, but first a beautiful Shakespearean verse is set to music, speaking of the ungraspability of love: "And I have found Demetrius, like a jewel. Mine own and not mine own", "And I have found fair Helen like a jewel, Mine own and not mine own", and so on in a continuous progression.
and the return of Bottom with his company, so you can hear how pestilent the part of the craftsmen is, with its strange accompaniment and the final fugato (alas, no video, only audio, but from the version directed by Britten). The part of the craftsmen is conceived as an ensemble of male voices, like the King's Singers; they almost always sing together in polyphony, with Flute performing senseless ornamentations in the high register, Snug providing long notes in the bass, and the others playing imitative inner parts.
the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe is all beautiful. For me, the two best moments are the part of the wall (... which is mine ...) and the final aria of Flute-Thisbe. But I am not finding any videos that satisfy me, so I will only post Thisbe's aria, a parody of the great arias in which the opera heroines commit suicide.
