A Midsummer Night's Dream

She loves him and he loves her and she loves her and she loves him, but he loves her. This or something similar is how the love turmoil of A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins. After a lot of back and forth, everyone seems to have found the right partner after all. Although? What happens in the forest stays in the forest …

Benjamin Britten’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream follows Shakespeare’s dramaturgy in a cleverly abridged form and, with the exception of one movement added by Britten, adopts the language of the great master. Britten focuses on the fairy world of the forest, whose enchanting sound he pours into music, giving space to unusual instrumentation: a countertenor as Oberon, a coloratura soprano as Tytania, followed by the children’s voices of the fairies. The musical counterpart is provided by the theatrical craftsmen with coarser tones. The different sound worlds are also reflected in the orchestration, and so each world – that of the elves, the lovers and the craftsmen – has its own specific instruments.
Director Bernd Mottl is no stranger to both the Schauspielhaus and opera in Graz, having most recently presented Nino Rota’s Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Hat) with his team at the opera house. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream , he focuses on the numerous
varieties of love surrounding Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander, but also Oberon and Tytania, and accompanies the lovers’ journey through their trials and tribulations to the final resolution. Not only do different forms of love play a role, but also those of the sexes that go far beyond heteronormativity.