A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM • GLYNDEBOURNE
★★★★☆☆
Photo: Tristram Kenton
REVIEW A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM: OLD SCHOOL OPERA MAGIC IN GLYNDEBOURNE
Glyndebourne is probably best known for its summer festival with a rich opera programme, complemented by the idyllic countryside of southern England and champagne picnics in tuxedos and Laura Ashley-style summer dresses, as only the English can do. But Glyndebourne also entertains with an autumn edition, where you can experience pure opera magic in Benjamin Britten’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Photo: Tristram Kenton
The plot is a bewildering mix of four young lovers, magic and mischievous elves, and a group of actors who bump into each other in a magical forest. The plot revolves around the capricious nature of love with the help of the mischievous elf Puk, who creates complications with his magic dust, causing the young lovers to fall in love with the wrong people.
Photo: Tristram Kenton
At the same time, a group of craftsmen meet in the forest to rehearse a play they are to perform for the newlyweds. In the end, all the complications are resolved, the young lovers find their true partners, and the actors can perform their quirky comedy on an improvised forest stage with a touch of 18th-century market square theatre and good-natured slapstick.
Benjamin Britten’s opera from 1960 was a huge hit in the esteemed British director Peter Hall’s production at Glyndebourne in 1981, and has proven to be a long-lasting production, which could be experienced at Malmö Opera in 2021, among other places.
The performance is old-school performing arts at its best. No clever video projections or fancy, contemporary additions. Just beautiful, beautiful sets of living trees, theatrical smoke and dazzlingly poetic lighting of moonlight and twilight in the “handheld” deciduous forest. Wonderful costumes in a kind of Neo-Elizabethan fairy-tale style top off the visual experience.
Photo: Tristram Kenton
Benjamin Britten’s characteristic music frames the magic of the forest in beautiful soundscapes with an undertone of unrest and eeriness. Britten is reportedly inspired by Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique in this work, but also creates Debussy-like soundscapes in which the competent cast of singers unfolds alongside a large boys’ choir.
A musical experience of a very special calibre, which holds together the chaotic story and Shakespeare’s unique, classical style of dialogue, which in the long run may well prove tiresome for the impatient theatregoer.
Four stars for this rustic, artistically satisfying Glyndebourne production, an exciting venue in the rolling green hills of the Sussex Downs, with an almost Scandinavian interior opera house design, easily accessible from London with a direct 85-minute train journey from Victoria to Lewes.
Photo: Tristram Kenton
Glyndebourne is an obvious candidate for your opera to-do list. The programme for the 2026 summer festival, 21 May-30 August, includes brand new productions of Tosca, l’Orfeo, Ariadne auf Naxos and a reunion with a string of the festival’s classics.
Read more here.
