Britten loved Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but in adapting it into musical theatre, had no qualms about making changes. Shakespeare’s is a rich mixture of the romantic, funny and tragic and Britten had to translate it into his own musical language. His opera is a masterpiece in its own right.
And Vienna State Opera’s director Irina Brook – whose father was the great Shakespearean director Peter Brook- manages the impossible. A ‘modern’ concept, faithful to Britten’s 1960’s opera, with Noëlle Ginefri-Corbel’s marvellous staging visually enhancing the music.
The huge stage set is a run-down, ruin of a country house – perhaps once a palace- taken over by fairies at night: here boy scouts, children prancing about with LED-like torches. Their leader Puck (Théo Touvet)- electric-green spiky hair, near-naked, tattooed- slides down the huge staircase’s banisters, and catapults into his followers with a bravura display of cartwheels. Touvet is a bundle of ceaseless energy.
Oberon descends the staircase to address ‘proud Tytania’ (red-headed American soprano Erin Morley), the Queen of the Fairies; their lovers’ tiff is having cosmic consequences. ‘The wind sucks up fogs’…Morley, outstanding, sings of a catalogue of natural catastrophes plaguing the human world.
Lawrence Zazzo’s phenomenally beautiful counter-tenor is another highlight; in a silver outfit, with a crown, reminiscent, dare I say, of Gary Glitter. They’re fighting over an Indian boy, an orphan whom Tytania had pledged his dying mother to adopt.So Oberon, mad about the boy, and to get even, commissions Puck ‘who knows where the wild thyme grows’. Touvet arrives, doing cartwheels, with a little red bundle; and with the juice he’ll blind her eyes and ‘make her full of hateful fantasies.’ (The potion, once administered , also makes humans fall in love with the next person they look at, with unforeseen consequences.) Thus will Oberon, seen fondling some magic snake, ‘render the child unto him.’

The first of the lovers, Hermia (Rachel Frankel) in bottle-green plaid skirt, with a leather satchel, runs into the arms of Lysander (Josh Lovell), in matching blazer with gold braiding. THEY ARE IN SCHOOL UNIFORMS; BUT THEY’RE ADULTS. They sing of lovers crossed for eternity. Casting these pairs of lovers as English sixth formers is credible. They’d be likely to use the abandoned country house and its ruins for romantic assignations, (if not sex.)
Lysander and Hermia plan to escape to his mother’s, and escape Demetrius (whom Hermia is engaged to.) But ‘let us teach patience.’ Their duet, I swear to thee by Venus, swearing their love using almost every classical reference, is impressively sung.
Then Demetrius, baritone Rafael Fingerlos, wearing swotty glasses, she Helena (Valentina Nafornita), awkward, intense, overbearing – and those glasses- as if stalking him. But what a voice! And such passion: only give me leave to follow thee! He- preceded by signature trumpet and percussion – is ‘sick to look at her.’ (All will change!) Meanwhile she’s prepared ‘to die upon his hand.’

THE MECHANICALS – not a rock group, but a group of craftsmen in Shakespeare’s sub-plot- the commoners an absurdist echo of the elevated passions of the ‘aristocratic’ principals. In their dungarees and overalls, they’re having a break, the fold-up table with cans of beer, flasks and sandwiches. Yet they’re an amateur dramatic society, putting on a classical play ,Pyramus and Thisbe. They’re over-ambitious, and self-congratulatory. Especially pompous Bottom, ‘This was Lofty’. They’re artisans, but there’s something ridiculous about their fighting over their parts. (Noises Off!) Bottom, actually the magnificent bass Peter Rose, sings he will be ‘as sweet-voiced as any nightingale.’
Meanwhile, Hermia, ‘yours faint with wonder’, cuddles up to Lysander – she’ll rest her head on him. Oberon takes pity on the unhappy lovers and gets Puck -that trumpet bugling- to drizzle the magic juice on Demetrius’s eyelids, so he’ll fall in love with Helena. (But Puck casts the spell on Lysander instead, who now falls in love with Helena. So Helena – also pursued by Demetrius, magicked by Oberon- has both men arguing over her!)

Troops of boy scouts, the fairies, surround Tytania, now sleeping in floral fabrics, like a Flower-Power goddess, on a chaise-longue. Oberon, evil, creeps up on her and sprinkles the magic liquid. Touvet’s Puck does a suggestive dance. Mischievous Puck plays a trick on Bottom and gives him the head of an ass.
In the farcical, I am not Piraes, but Bottom the Weaver, Rose gives a bravado performance, Bottom, blown-up with self-importance, but ignorant of his self-absurdity. Rose sings marvellously (A tribute all those amateur theatricals, and G&S societies.) There’s an exquisite tenor, cross-dressed in the role of Thisbe, awkward in his painter’s overalls, shakily finding his confidence.
Bottom, transformed, metamorphosed with donkey’s ears protruding; they’re making an ass of him. Thus endowed, he comes across the bewitched, sleeping Titania. Bottom’s waking Tytania is, of course, a highlight; and sung by Rose and Morley in the roles, it’s unforgettable. It must be both comic and poignant: beauty and the beast. Love is blind. ‘What angel wakes me from my flower bed?’ And, absurdly,’ Thou art as wise as thou are beautiful.’ To the incredulous onlookers, Be kind to this gentleman. Lying with her on the couch, Rose’s lips are salivating, his eyes popping out of their sockets. Tytania scratches his ears: he is ecstatic. ‘I have a good ear in music’, he boasts to Britten’s parody Humpty-Dumpty refrain. Is this the performance of his career- even after all his triumphs? (Ochs in Rosenkavalier.) ‘Oh, how I love thee Tytania’: just marvellous.
Puck escapes Oberon’s wrath, Touvet swings across the stage on a rope like a Tarzan. In the plot, Demetrius, his eyes ‘enchanted’ by Oberon, suddenly ‘loves Hermia not.’ And Helena thinks they’re ‘set upon her for merriment.’
All schooldays friendship’s childhood innocence– Nafornita’s Hermia exquisitely sung. ‘You thief of love.’ She was a vixen when she went to school; now I’ll go with them cheek by jowl‘. Britten and Pears’ adaptation liberally draws on Shakespeare’s text.

Day breaks, the magic wears off. Tytania, as if in a trance, awakes in her bed of blossoms. And, stunning stagecraft, her floral gown opens out as she ascends, floating upwards, only to descend to human level. And in a brilliantly choreographed scene, the woman brought down to size, engages with Oberon in a tarantella, erotic slow tango; Morley and Zazzo float, dance closer, and disappear off stage.
Leaving Bottom, in red breeches… The view, daylight shining through, of green pastures: looking out from a huge room in a derelict castle, each corner occupied by different lovers. Waking up after- well- an orgy of passion – high on who knows what- in bed with unexpected partners. But Hermia is now with Lysander, and Demetrius hand-in-hand with Helena. ‘So me thinks I have found Lysander like a jewel; and I have found Lysander like a jewel…’ In the Quartet, they have re-found each other, reunited one-and-all in friendship. Undoubtedly moving: the reconciliation, and healing power of comedy.
Bottom, left alone, is yet to awake: to deep cellos, tuba, gruff brass. ‘When my part comes up, (Pyramus), call me’, he hiccups, donkey-like. He tries to understand what’s happened; sings of ‘a dream beyond the wit of man.’
When he appears before the Mechanicals, ‘Sweet Bottom has lost Sixpence a day’, to perform their piece, ‘very tragical mirth’, for the marriage of Hippolyta (Szylia Vörös) and Theseus (Peter Kellner.) “A sound but not in government”, comments Theseus. The lovers, in the (Shakespearean) resolution, sit in white – as if the wedding were theirs jointly – all strife suspended. Bottom,’with the help of a singer, might recover and prove an ass.’ Lovers to bed, it’s almost midnight, fairy-time…
Britten’s opera, about ‘forgiveness, reconciliation, self-discovery’, is surely a masterpiece. Why do we hear it so rarely in Britain? Bravo Vienna! (State Opera Orchestra conducted by Simone Young). © P.R. 21.10.2019
Photos: Erin Morley(Tytania), Lawrence Zazzo (Oberon); Lawrence Zazzo (Oberon), Theo Touvet (Puck); Rafael Figerlos (Demetrius), Valentina Nafornita (Helena), Rachel Frenkel (Hermia), Josh Lovell (Lysander); Peter Rose (Bottom), Erin Morley (Tytania); Erin Morley and Lawrence Zazzo
© Wiener Staatsoper/ Michael Pöhn