Britten’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ – premiere production

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Introduction by Arnold Whittall

Opera at Aldeburgh
From its launch in June 1948, the Aldeburgh Festival has always been a midsummer
event. Nevertheless, until the transformation of the disused Maltings at nearby
Snape into a finely equipped arts complex, first opened in 1967, the performance
of such large-scale operas set at midsummer as Wagner’s Die Meistersinger or
Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage was impossible. To date, neither of these
masterworks has actually been heard at the Festival, but in 1960 Britten himself
was to provide a seasonally-appropriate opera which has proved to be one of his
most enduring, oft-performed successes.

E.M. Forster left a particularly vivid recollection of the cramped and somewhat
chaotic conditions for the staging of Britten’s chamber opera Albert Herring in
Aldeburgh’s Jubilee Hall during the first Festival. Even so, Festival goers soon came
to relish the intimate atmosphere and lively acoustics of the small but serviceable
Hall, conveniently located in the centre of Aldeburgh just a short distance from
Britten’s residence on Crag Path (he moved to the Red House in 1958). The
decision to undertake improvements and renovations to the Jubilee Hall – and
especially to the back-stage facilities – in time for the thirteenth Festival in 1960
meant that an appropriately celebratory composition from Britten to mark the
occasion was clearly required.

During the later 1950s Britten had made no attempt to follow up his grandlyconceived
coronation opera Gloriana (1953); and after the much more
concentrated chamber opera The Turn of the Screw (1954) he had begun to plan for a
different kind of music drama reflecting his admiration for Japanese Noh theatre
and the Gamelan music he had heard in the Far East. With librettist William Plomer
he had begun to prepare for what would eventually be the first of three ‘parables
for church performance’, Curlew River (1964). Meanwhile, Noye’s Fludde, the short
theatre piece based on the Chester Miracle Play (first performed during the 1958
Festival in Orford Church) confirmed that for Britten the future of dramatic music
did not necessarily lie in the traditional opera house. Being nothing if not a
practical man about music, however, he soon realised that even if Curlew River could
be completed in time for the 1960 reopening of the Jubilee Hall, it would be some
way from the kind of feel-good celebration the occasion required.

During 1958 Britten had set Shakespeare for the first time, using Sonnet 43
(‘When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see’) for the final section of his
Nocturne for tenor, seven obbligato instruments and strings. Combining his familiar
theme of night and sleep with performance at the (mid)summer solstice and the
subject seemed obvious, not least because it would probably be less timeconsuming
to adapt an existing play than to start from scratch with a new librettist.
The entire process seems to have been accomplished between July 1959 and May
1960, with most of the work on cutting and reshaping the Shakespearean text being
done by Peter Pears. Despite a mass of other commitments, and the usual attendant
health problems, Britten finished the work in time for the official premiere at the
Jubilee Hall on 11 June 1960. That was not broadcast, but on 24 June the BBC relayed this recording, which had been made at the final
dress rehearsal on 10 June, in front of an invited audience whose amusement and
appreciation as the performance proceeds are evident throughout.

Despite being conceived specifically for the Jubilee Hall, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
is not ‘officially’ a chamber opera. One reviewer of the premiere felt that it was ‘a
little cramped in the Aldeburgh frame’, while another suggested that ‘John Piper’s
sets were not really seen to advantage on the rather cramped stage of the Jubilee
Hall’. Most critics were impressed by the effectiveness of the adaptation and by
Britten’s music, though there was criticism of John Cranko’s production, and of his
perhaps understandable failure to turn the inexperienced counter-tenor Alfred
Deller into a convincing stage performer.

Britten had his own reservations about Cranko, and made no objection when he
was replaced by John Gielgud for the opera’s first staging at Covent Garden in
February 1961, conducted by Georg Solti. When Decca came to record the work
in 1966 Britten had rewritten Snug’s ‘Lion’ solo in Act 3, and there were a
considerable number of cast changes, making this recording of the first, relatively
small-scale production of even greater interest. The closeness of cast to audience is
evident from the sound itself, but the acoustic effect is certainly not unduly
cramped or congested, and singers without big operatic voices could project their
music with relatively little strain. This is especially so with Alfred Deller, whose
casting as Oberon was a first for a voice-type that at that time was becoming
increasingly familiar in early music, less so on the contemporary scene. (The score
allows for a ‘contralto’ to take the part, but there is no evidence that this option has ever been adopted.) This BBC recording is also the only one in which Peter
Pears takes his original part of Flute; he sang Lysander for Decca, yielding the
comic role to Kenneth Macdonald.

© Arnold Whittall 2014

Benjamin Britten  (1913 – 1976)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Opera in three acts to a libretto adapted by the composer and Peter Pears, from William Shakespeare’s play of the same name.
Premiere: 11 June 1960, Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh

Track 1 – Act One

Track 2 – Act Two

Track 3 – Act Three

Synopsis by Arnold Whittall

Act 1

The wood, deepening twilight
The orchestral introduction establishes a dream-like mood of magic and mystery
with soft, sliding sonorities, material that returns to link the five main scenes of Act
1. But the story to be told is essentially a comedy rather than something more
sinister, and this becomes clear as soon as Puck and the fairies appear: the initial
fairies song – ‘Over hill, over dale/Through bush, through brier’ – suggests a
group of boisterous schoolboys bent on mischief. Oberon and Tytania enter, in the
middle of a passionate dispute about ‘a lovely boy stolen from an Indian King’, and
the extravagant Shakespearean language of their quarrel is matched by Britten’s
hectic music. After Tytania storms off, with the fairies in tow, Oberon calms down,
and tells Puck of his plan to trick the Fairy Queen with a magic herb – ‘The juice
of it, on sleeping eyelids laid/Will make or man or woman madly dote/Upon the
next live creature that it see.’

Oberon and Puck leave, and the orchestra reasserts the magical mood as the next
group of characters appears. These are the four mortals, first the compatible Lysander and Hermia, who swear undying fidelity to each other, then the wholly
incompatible Demetrius and Helena: Demetrius (presently also in love with
Hermia) responds to Helena’s devotion by declaring that ‘I am sick when I look on
thee’. Observing this, Oberon decides, in an elaborate aria – ‘I know a bank where
the wild thyme blows’ – that Puck should extend his magic tricks to the mortal
couple.

Next, as the libretto puts it, ‘the six rustics enter cautiously’, to music that
manages evident mockery with a light touch, and unfolds the narrative with
maximum clarity of characterisation – Peter Quince, author of ‘the most
lamentable comedy’ (which they are to perform later at the Athenian court)
attempting to keep them in order, the bolshy weaver Bottom determined to take as
many parts in their play as possible, while the quartet of Flute, Starveling, Stout
and Snug are timid in varying degrees about taking part. Having received their
scripts, and agreeing to meet later to ‘rehearse most obscenely and courageously’,
the rustics leave, and it is time for the second appearance of the four lovers. Lost
and exhausted, Lysander and Hermia fall asleep pledging mutual loyalty. Then Puck
catches up with them, squeezing his magic herb juice onto Lysander’s eyes. When
he wakes, the first ‘live creature’ he sees is not Hermia but Helena, who has just
arrived in pursuit of Demetrius. Helena runs off in a rage, followed closely by an
ardent Lysander: Hermia then wakes alone and alarmed, leaving this area of the
magic wood clear as Tytania and her attendant fairies return.

The Fairy Queen prepares herself for sleep, and her acolytes sing a surprisingly
lively lullaby – ‘You spotted snakes with double tongue’. Tytania nevertheless falls asleep with magical promptness, and her attendants withdraw, leaving space for
Oberon to return with his own piece of the magic herb. Mischief is still uppermost
in Oberon’s mind as he applies the juice to the sleeping Tytania’s eyes. ‘When thou
wak’st, it is thy dear/Wake when come vile thing is near’.

Act 2

The setting is the same woodland scene as ended Act 1, though the labile orchestral
texture has been replaced by a sequence of four gently sustained chords, doubtless
in wry homage to Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, though
replacing Mendelsohn’s diatonic E major with a progression embracing all twelve
chromatic semitones. The rustics have reconvened to rehearse their play, observed
by the mischief-making Puck, and when Bottom returns from his strategic exit
wearing the head of an ass, the other rustics run off in terror (‘Bless thee, Bottom,
bless thee: thou art translated’). Undeterred, the weaver bawls out his rustic song
– ‘The wousell cock, so black of hue’ – which wakes Tytania. Oberon’s trick has
worked out just as he hoped. To Tytania, Bottom with his ass-head is a ‘gentle
mortal …as wise as thou art beautiful. She instructs the fairies to pander to his
every whim (‘Be kind and courteous to this gentleman’) and much as Bottom
enjoys their attentiveness he soon starts to yawn, declaring that ‘I have an
exposition of sleep come upon me’. Tytania embraces him – ‘O how I love thee!
How I dote on thee!’ – and they sleep.

Oberon and Puck can now enjoy the gratifyingly successful results of their trickery.
But the entry of a baffled Demetrius and a truculent Hermia makes clear to them
that Puck’s second foray into relationship management has misfired. With Hermia storming off and Demetrius falling into an exhausted sleep Oberon himself
attempts to repair the damage while Puck draws Helena and Lysander back into
their orbit. The inevitable result is more confusion, as Helena reacts incredulously
to Demetrius’s sudden return to devotion, and an extended quartet of mutual
recrimination ensues. Furious with Puck, Oberon gives him one final set of
instructions to follow the discordant lovers and correct the error. Puck pursues the
task with relish – ‘Up and down, up and down/I will lead them up and down’ –
disguising his voice to imitate Demetrius, then Lysander, until the four are back in
place, falling asleep with magical convenience so that the remedial juice-squeezing
can take place. The act ends with the fairies singing another lullaby, this one of
sublime gentleness and simplicity. ‘On the ground sleep sound’. Just as the song
promises, ‘Jack shall have Jill/Nought shall go ill/The man shall have his mare
again/And all shall be well’.

Act 3

With daybreak, the time has come for reconciliation and resolution. Still in the
woodland scene, Oberon – now, he tells us, in possession of the ‘Indian boy’, the
source of all the trouble – undoes the ‘hateful imperfection’ of Tytania’s eyes.
Waking, the Queen regards the translated Bottom with disbelief – ‘Oh, how mine
eyes do loathe his visage now!’ – and she and Oberon begin a solemn dance of
celebration which, he promises, will be brought to fulfilment later at Duke
Theseus’s court. Next, it is the turn of the four mortal lovers to wake, discovering
their true partners and going on their way with a promise to ‘recount our dreams’.
Finally, Bottom – without his ass’s head – wakes up, and makes an effort to understand his own dream, while forced to admit that ‘The eye of man hath not
heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to
conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was’. When Bottom’s fellow
rustics appear in anxious search of him, he is uncharacteristically lost for words in
trying to explain his adventures. In any case, there is a more urgent task ahead –
presenting their play later that day at the Duke of Athens’s court.

A bustling interlude charts the opera’s only change of scene, from the wood to the
royal palace. Theseus and Hyppolyta are celebrating their nuptials, and also those of
the ‘fair lovers’ and gentle friends’: Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena.
In order ‘to while away this long age of three hours/Between our after-supper and
bed-time’, the ‘tedious brief scene of young Pyramus/And his love Thisby’ is to be
performed by the six rustics. From Britten ‘this merry and tragical’ drama inspires
knowing but never laboured parody, culminating in Thisbe’s Donizetti-mocking
mad scene, complete with obbligato flute. A year or so before composing this
opera, Britten had reported to Peter Pears that a performance of Lucia di
Lammermoor at Covent Garden was ‘the most horrid experience. It is an awful
work, common and vulgar’: ideal, in fact, as the basis for his own affectionately
‘common and vulgar’ masque. The rustics’ performance ends with a lively dance.
Then the clock strikes twelve and Theseus commands: ‘Lovers to bed, ‘tis almost
fairy time’. The mortals withdraw, leaving the palace to Oberon, Tytania, Puck and
the fairies. Together they enact a ritual blessing ‘though this palace with sweet
peace’, in a final ensemble of magical beauty. Like Shakespeare, however, Britten
allows Puck the last work, to bring the audience back from blissful dreaming to
good-humoured if also slightly regretful reality.

© Arnold Whittall, 2014

Original cast recording from the Dress rehearsal at the Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh 10 June 1960.

This recording remastered by Roger Beardsley and Paul Baily.

Original recording from The Harewood Collection

• Alfred Deller
  Oberon
• Jenifer Vyvyan
  Tytania
• Leonide Massine II
  Puck
• Kevin Platts
  Cobweb
• Michael Bauer
  Peaseblossom
• Robert McCutcheon
  Mustardseed
• Barry Ferguson
  Moth
• Thomas Bevan, Thomas Smith
  Fairies
• Forbes Robinson
  Theseus
• Johanna Peters
  Hippolyta
• George Maran
  Lysander
• Thomas Hemsley
  Demetrius
• Marjorie Thomas
  Hermia
• April Cantelo
  Helena
• Owen Brannigan
  Bottom
• Norman Lumsden
  Quince
• Peter Pears
  Flute
• David Kelly
  Snug
• Edward Byles
  Snout
• Joseph Ward
  Starveling
• English Opera Group Orchestra
  
• Benjamin Britten
  Conductor