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Great Britten’s
Shakespeare
Long Night’s Journey into Delight
By Brian Fitzgerald
What better way to inject a little summer into a long winter than a production of Benjamin Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
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| David Cushing (CFA’04) as Bottom (left) and Tracy Wise (CFA’04) as Flute rehearse for CFA’s production of the Benjamin Britten opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Vernon Doucette | |
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The opera has enjoyed much success since its first performance in 1960
at the prestigious Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk, England, which makes
it an excellent choice for the College of Fine Arts’ first opera
of the season. “It’s perfect theater,” says Sharon Daniels,
a CFA professor and director of opera programs for the CFA school of music.
“There is so much texture and humor in the opera. It’s a fantastic
adaptation of the Shakespeare play.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is among the top three on Daniels’
list of favorite operas, will be staged by the BU Opera Institute and
the BU Chamber Orchestra from February 13 to 16 at the Boston University
Theatre Mainstage.
The 400-year-old comedy has seen probably thousands of productions (if
one counts high school renditions), including a 1935 movie that many thought
miscast Mickey Rooney as Puck and Jimmy Cagney as Bottom, and the 1982
Woody Allen film A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy -- an extremely
loose reworking of the Shakespeare play.
Although the production’s costumes will range from late Victorian
to contemporary, the presentation will stay true to Shakespeare. Britten
brings the classic story to life musically, using what most critics feel
was an appropriate abridgement of the Bard’s original. Britten simply
“remade” the play to suit the operatic stage, and in the process
composed a musical masterpiece.
What is it about Britten’s take on this Shakespeare comedy that
earns so much critical acclaim? “He uses an orchestra to help paint
the different groups of characters,” explains William Lumpkin, Opera
Institute music director and an assistant professor, who will conduct
the BU Chamber Orchestra. “The groupings of instruments, the orchestration,
paint a musical and dramatic picture. The lovers’ orchestration,
for example, is very rich, with strings and low brass, and very romantic.
The fairies’ music has lots of harps and bells -- which creates
a glistening kind of color.”
When he and Daniels pick an opera for their students, they make a decision
after “getting a feel for the core group of singers,” says
Lumpkin. “Then we choose the piece that best serves not only them,
but also everyone involved. And I think that A Midsummer Night’s
Dream is a great opera for an institution like ours because it affords
so many opportunities.” Lumpkin was the assistant director of a
production of the opera when he was an undergraduate at the University
of Southern California, and he recalls that the comical chaos was a huge
hit.
The play -- and the opera -- is a fantasy, a comedy, and a romance all
in one. “It’s one of the most musical of Shakespeare’s
plays,” says Jim Petosa, director of CFA’s school of theatre
arts and the production’s stage director. “And Britten’s
score is meticulous.” A tale of flirtations turned upside down by
the hijinks of unseen fairies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream demands
fine comedic and singing talents, and judging by a recent rehearsal, its
cast of CFA students is ready to rise to the occasion. They are confident
and loose, and Petosa is giving them the fine-tuning necessary to enchant
the audience. “You’re lost in each other,” he tells
the actors playing Titania and Oberon, guiding them to convey their characters’
love convincingly. “It’s a big moment of reconciliation.”
And when they repeat the scene, they seem to have taken his advice to
heart and to have indeed become those newly reunited lovers.
Of course, “What’s my motivation?” is about the oldest
cliché in acting, but the director’s job is to provide guidance,
and not just to college thespians. “It’s no different than
I would do with seasoned professionals,” Petosa says, “helping
that actor shape that particular moment into something special, to etch
the performance more carefully.” He relentlessly coaches the actors,
and they are eager to learn.
The stage set, Petosa says, will be impressive, taking its inspiration
from visual images of the universe, such as those taken by the Hubble
Space Telescope. The lighting design will play on the power of the sun
and the moon.
Petosa says the audience -- and he hopes, the press -- will not be the
only ones pleased with this collaborative production. “The Opera
Institute students benefit because they’re getting a certain level
of theatrical expertise,” he says, “and the theatre arts students
benefit because they get to forge an appreciation of another dramatic
medium.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be performed at the BU Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave., on Thursday, February 13, at 7:30 p.m., Friday, February 14, and Saturday, February 15, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, February 16, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 and $10 general admission; $10 and $8 BU alumni and Huntington Theatre Company subscribers; $5 students and senior citizens; one free ticket for faculty and staff based on availability. For more information, see Calendar, page 4, or call the box office at 617-266-0800.
7 February 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations