Word: brittens
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...considered dull singing, a trend that confirms my suspicion of a steady decline in operatic sensibilities. This decline may have started at roughly the same time that Opera began to die as an art form: something which occurred after the death of Puccini and before that of Benjamin Britten. We are now an artistically starved audience, looking at the operatic stage not as an expression of contemporary life, but as a musical museum, where singers execute historical documents, with technical accuracy and precision but little sincerity. Today the opera houses of the world abound with what Toscanini called "musica inutile...
...also the best place to set one. A Midsummer Night's Dream is at once a producer of magical events and a product of the wood outside Athens where it occurs. Shakespeare wrote about mortals and spirits tangled in a complicated web of deception and enchantment. In Benjamin Britten's operatic version of the play the twinings of reality and illusion combine to confuse all the wanderers in the wood. The fairies bewitch the mortals and each other, the mortals get lost and easily fall prey to the fairies' spells. But all, human and immortal alike, are animated...
...Dream is as multi-layered as any forest. Lyrically, it is basically the play as Shakespeare wrote it, cut by half to exclude most of the scenes outside the forest. Britten composed it in 1960. From the beginning of the overture to Puck's last speech the opera combines different musical modes to represent the different levels and intensities of action. The most striking distinctions are between the music moving the spirits and that moving the mere mortals. All different kinds of musical textures and harmonies distinguish the two groups. The fairies are musically represented by instruments like the harp...
Oberon, played by Hohn Heseltine, has an amazing voice. There is a strange paradox to Britten's characterization of the role--the King of the Fairies has to have a high voice that contrasts with the voices of the humans. Heseltine manages to avoid the pitfall of sounding like a choir-boy. He sounds unearthly and commanding at the same time...
Across the street, meanwhile, at Lowell House, Puck is also recognizing mortals for fools. Song is the key note here with Benjamin Britten's full-scale opera of A Midsummer Night's Dream being staged in all its glory. Performances also begin tonight and run through Saturday at 8:30 p.mm...