A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Opera North). Theatre Royal, Nottingham. 20 November 2024,

5✩✩✩✩✩. Review: William Ruff.

“Opera North casts a potent spell.”

It’s not surprising that Benjamin Britten was drawn to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The play offers many gifts to composers: magic, romantic love, quarrels, confusions, slapstick comedy – in a world constantly shifting between human and fairy, high and low, young and old, harmony and discord.

It would be easy to spend an entire review describing how OperaNorth’s production engages the eye.  Huge transparent balloons float above the stage whilst sheets of corrugated Perspex descend.  The four lovers sport 1960s-style psychedelic clothing (both when fully dressed and when stripped to their undies).  Puck is notable for being smooth above, shaggy below and for his red boxers.  The fairy royals are dazzling (literally), their multi-mirrored surfaces bouncing back the bright stage lights into the auditorium.  The young fairies are all blond-wigged in white shorts, white t-shirts – and have really cute black wings.

Although it’s the sort of design that will divide opinion, Britten’s music (and, of course, Shakespeare’s words) are what the opera is all about.  The composer and his partner, Peter Pears, created the libretto themselves, cleverly cutting the text in half (NB it still runs for 3 hours 20 minutes).  The music is often breathtakingly beautiful and needs top-class performers to bring out its magical qualities.  Britten creates three distinct sound worlds: the fairies have bright, glittering music; the comic rustics have earthy trombone and bassoon; the lovers are more conventional (strings, woodwind etc).

The contrast between these worlds and the melting of one into the other are what makes the sound of Britten’s MND so compelling.  Oh, and there’s Britten extraordinary word-painting: the way the combination of words and music magically evokes the thing being described.  It’s there throughout, especially in Oberon’s deeply sensuous evocations of the natural world.

The opera simply doesn’t work if the singing and playing are less than top-notch.  Luckily Opera North’s huge team rises to Britten’s many challenges.  Conductor Garry Walker knows how to paint musical pictures with the very finest of brushes – right from the opening bars with their barely audible sliding chords on the strings which transport us to the opera’s domain of dreams and sleep.  His orchestra responds with razor-sharp precision throughout.

The line-up of singers is consistently strong.  They throw themselves into the absurdities of the plot - both physically and vocally - with great gusto.  To select just two: James Lain delivers Oberon’s magical (yet frequently sinister) lines beautifully.  And Henry Waddington as Bottom is as resplendent of voice as he is hugely funny.  The chorus of 18 fairies are always a joy to hear and behold - and it will be hard to dislodge the earthy antics of Daniel Abelson’s Puck from the memory.  But it takes an entire company of cast and creatives to cast a spell of such potency.

Opera North: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

James Lain OBERON, Daisy Brown TYTANIA, Daniel Abelson PUCK, Camilla Harris HELENA, Siân Griffiths HERMIA, Peter Kirk LYSANDER, James Newby DEMETRIUS, Henry Waddington BOTTOM, Nicholas Watts FLUTE, Dean Robinson QUINCE, Colin Judson SNOUT, Nicholas Butterfield STARVELING, Frazer Scott SNUG, Andri Björn Róbertsson THESEUS, Molly Barker HIPPOLYTA… and the Chorus of Fairies.

Creatives

The Orchestra of Opera North, Garry Walker CONDUCTOR

Martin Duncan DIRECTOR

Matthew Eberhardt REVIVAL DIRECTOR

Johan Engels SET DESIGNER

Ashley Martin-Davis COSTUME DESIGNER

Bruno Poet LIGHTING DESIGNER