scholarly journals A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reflections on Benjamin Britten’s Chamber Opera

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 33796
Author(s):  
Anna Stegh Camati
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Chamber Opera ◽  
Benjamin Britten ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Theater Music ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
A Performance

Opera performances, located at the intersection of literature, theater music and the visual arts, tend to fuse specificities of several art forms. This essay reflects on the libretto and score of the chamber opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960), by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), based on Shakespeare’s homonymous text (1595-1596), and analyses the 1981 operatic adaptation at Glyndebourne, directed by the renowned theatre director and régisseur Peter Hall (1930-2017). The intermedial dialogues among Shakespeare, Britten and Hall will be investigated in the light of theoretical perspectives by Linda and Michael Hutcheon, Claus Clüver, Jorge Coli, Freda Chapple and others.***Sonho de uma noite de verão: reflexões sobre a ópera de câmara de Benjamin Britten***Situada na interface da literatura, teatro, música e artes visuais, a performance operística é caracterizada pela fusão de especificidades de diversas formas de arte. Este ensaio reflete sobre o libreto e a partitura de Sonho de uma noite de verão (1960), ópera de câmara de Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), composta a partir do texto homônimo (1595-1596) de Shakespeare, e analisa a adaptação operística de 1981 apresentada em Glyndebourne, dirigida pelo renomado diretor de teatro e régisseur Peter Hall (1930-2017). Os diálogos intermidiáticos entre Shakespeare, Britten e Hall serão investigados à luz de considerações teóricas de Linda e Michael Hutcheon, Claus Clüver, Jorge Coli, Freda Chapple e outros.Palavras-chave: Shakespeare; Benjamin Britten; Peter Hall; Adaptação;Intermidialidade

Victorian Fairies and Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream in England

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marian Wilson Kimber
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Incidental Music ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Theatrical Performances ◽  
Predominantly Female ◽  
To Receive ◽  
British Nationalism

In art, literature, theatre and music, Victorians demonstrated increased interest in the supernatural and nostalgia for a lost mythic time, a response to rapid technological change and increased urbanization. Romanticism generated a new regard for Shakespeare, also fuelled by British nationalism. The immortal bard's plays began to receive theatrical performances that more accurately presented their original texts, partially remedying the mutilations of the previous century. The so-called ‘fairy’ plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, were also popular subjects for fairy paintings, stemming from the establishment of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in 1789. In such a context, it is no wonder that Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream was so overwhelmingly popular in England and that his style became closely associated with the idea of fairies. This article explores how the Victorians’ understanding of fairies and how the depiction of fairies in the theatre and visual arts of the period influenced the reception of Mendelssohn's music, contributing to its construction as ‘feminine’. Victorian fairies, from the nude supernatural creatures cavorting in fairy paintings to the diaphanously gowned dancers treading lightly on the boards of the stage, were typically women. In his study of Chopin reception, Jeffrey Kallberg has interpreted fairies as androgynous, but Victorian fairies were predominantly female, so much so that Lewis Spence's 1948 study, The Fairy Tradition in Britain, includes an entire section on fairy gender intended to refute the long-standing notion that there were no male fairies. Thus, for Mendelssohn to have composed the leading musical work that depicted fairies contributed to his increasingly feminized reputation over the course of the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Intermedial Performance Aesthetics in Patricia Fagundes' A Midsummer Night's Dream

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-156
Author(s):  
Anna Stegh Camati
Keyword(s):  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
And Shifts

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1594-1595), Shakespeare introduces elements borrowed from court masques, mainly music and dance. After a brief exploration of critical arguments claiming that Shakespeare’s play is the model for musical versions produced during and after the Restoration, this essay investigates the negotiations and shifts of meaning in the homonymous Brazilian adaptation (2006), staged by Cia. Rústica and directed by Patrícia Fagundes. The intermedial processes, articulated in the transposition from page to stage, will be analyzed in the light of contemporary theoretical perspectives.

The Song Inside Your Mind

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-92
Author(s):  
Drew Massey
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Benjamin Britten ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Contemporary Opera ◽  
Public Imagination

Adès’s second opera, The Tempest (2003), has been celebrated for many reasons. In the public imagination it has solidified comparisons between Adès and Benjamin Britten (the composer of one of the other most well-known Shakespeare operas of the last hundred years, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1960). The Tempest also established Adès as a leading presence in contemporary opera. My goal in this essay is to explore how two interrelated concerns—the expressive possibilities of moving from one medium to another and the interpenetration of different subjectivities with one another—show one way of thinking about The Tempest which is emblematic of several recurrent aspects Adès’s sensibility. The Tempest, as the largest work he completed in the decade after his initial flush of success in the 1990s, demonstrates the longevity of his quest for what he calls “new objects” which transcend their medium and engender singular subjective experiences.

Shakespeare Afoot

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kerrigan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

That Shakespeare adds a limp to the received characterization of Richard III is only the most conspicuous instance of his interest in how actors walked, ran, danced, and wandered. His attention to actors’ footwork, as an originating condition of performance, can be traced from Richard III through A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It into Macbeth, which is preoccupied with the topic and activity all the way to the protagonist’s melancholy conclusion that ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player | That struts and frets his hour upon the stage’. Drawing on classical and early modern accounts of how people walk and should walk, on ideas about time and prosody, and the experience of disability, this chapter cites episodes in the history of performance to show how actors, including Alleyn, Garrick, and Olivier, have worked with the opportunities to dramatize footwork that are provided by Shakespeare’s plays.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document