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Feb. 11th, 2019 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretA Midsummer Night's Dream by Benjamin Britten, staged at the Philadelphia Opera
I really love Britten's score a lot. The harps and the bells and the strings, ohhhhh, the glissandi. It's a music of enchantment and it conjures up Oberon and Tytania's magical forest so vividly.
This seems to be the first time I've seen the thing live in its entirety- I missed the first act when I saw it at the Met because of traffic. But the version I imprinted on is David Daniels's Oberon in a Barcelona production on DVD. Daniels manages an incredible fey masculinity that is perfect for the role. I haven't always loved Daniels's singing, but he is perfection there, and that production is what I measure Midsummers against.
Robert Carsen's production sets the action on the border of dream and magic by conjuring up the forest as a mess of green and white bedding. In the first act, the set is a single massive bed the size of the stage, with megapillows for flopping onto and a green topsheet representing the forest. In the second act, the single bed is replaced by seven normal sized replicas, all the better for bedswapping confusions. In the third act, three beds float above the stage, with each of the entranced couples on one, suspended on wires, until they are lowered to the ground one by one as the lovers are awakened. It struck a nice balance for me for an economical production design that still delivered the imagery you need to enjoy the Dream. If you're not going to commit to full-on magical forest on stage, this was a nice way to go.
Tim Mead's Oberon did not match the standard set by Daniels- he was not overpowering in the same way- but he was spooky and otherworldly and he was well balanced by Anna Christy's Tytania, who managed at different moments to be petty or sexy or ethereal as needed. Matthew Rose's Bottom was the comic anchor the show needed. Miltos Yeromelou, a stage actor hopping over to the opera for the spoken role of Puck, was delightfully puckish, though perhaps not the conventional operatic Puck.
I really love Britten's score a lot. The harps and the bells and the strings, ohhhhh, the glissandi. It's a music of enchantment and it conjures up Oberon and Tytania's magical forest so vividly.
This seems to be the first time I've seen the thing live in its entirety- I missed the first act when I saw it at the Met because of traffic. But the version I imprinted on is David Daniels's Oberon in a Barcelona production on DVD. Daniels manages an incredible fey masculinity that is perfect for the role. I haven't always loved Daniels's singing, but he is perfection there, and that production is what I measure Midsummers against.
Robert Carsen's production sets the action on the border of dream and magic by conjuring up the forest as a mess of green and white bedding. In the first act, the set is a single massive bed the size of the stage, with megapillows for flopping onto and a green topsheet representing the forest. In the second act, the single bed is replaced by seven normal sized replicas, all the better for bedswapping confusions. In the third act, three beds float above the stage, with each of the entranced couples on one, suspended on wires, until they are lowered to the ground one by one as the lovers are awakened. It struck a nice balance for me for an economical production design that still delivered the imagery you need to enjoy the Dream. If you're not going to commit to full-on magical forest on stage, this was a nice way to go.
Tim Mead's Oberon did not match the standard set by Daniels- he was not overpowering in the same way- but he was spooky and otherworldly and he was well balanced by Anna Christy's Tytania, who managed at different moments to be petty or sexy or ethereal as needed. Matthew Rose's Bottom was the comic anchor the show needed. Miltos Yeromelou, a stage actor hopping over to the opera for the spoken role of Puck, was delightfully puckish, though perhaps not the conventional operatic Puck.
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Date: 2019-02-14 04:50 pm (UTC)Man, this makes me really want to see the Daniels DVD, and now I feel sad I didn't see it before all the stuff came out about him :(
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Date: 2019-02-14 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-14 08:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-16 03:53 am (UTC)One of my Daniels tracks came up on spotify shuffle today, and it made me sad. He's *such* a good musician! And I'll probably watch the Midsummer DVD at some point. I just wish, well. Mostly that this stuff hadn't happened.
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Date: 2019-02-19 09:57 pm (UTC)Made all the more fraught since we'll probably never know for certain whether Britten himself did similar things. The calculus is different because Britten can no longer profit personally from our hearing his music performed, but still...
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Date: 2019-02-23 07:55 pm (UTC)I wonder if this is why there's no Britten this season at the Met. Although maybe it's not got the draw power of Puccini :P