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- [00:41]
Pat Wright
Welcome to another edition of Opera for Everyone. I am your host, Pat Wright, and I am once again joined by Kathleen Vanderwil. Welcome, Kathleen.
- [00:49]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Oh, it is so nice to be with you again, Pat.
- [00:52]
Pat Wright
Yes. And we have some source material for our opera today that I know that you're going to enjoy.
- [00:59]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, source material for this is Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and that is one of. I don't know if it's one of my favorite of his plays, but definitely one I know the best and have seen probably a million times.
- [01:13]
Pat Wright
Yes, Midsummer Night's Dream is performed frequently. I think it's a little more accessible to a general audience these days. This opera is a very old work, actually technically called a semi opera, but people even in the day called it opera. The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell, an English composer, a very, very well regarded English composer. I am looking so forward to getting into this with you because there's all the complexity of working and adapting a Shakespeare work, but then there's also the complexity of the baroque style style of music and how the English presented dramatic entertainments with music. And this is a very different piece. This is why they call it a semi opera. The way scholars will talk about Purcell, he only wrote one true opera, and that was Dido and Aeneas, because that had only sung parts. But this had sung parts, it had spoken parts, lots of dance. It is a multimedia extravaganza. People even, you know, that's our phrase. But it is definitely what would have been done at the time, what the audience has expected.
- [02:29]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And one of the things that's most interesting to me about this is that because this is, as you say, one of the oldest operas that we will talk about, it is closest in time to Shakespeare's own day. And I think there are some elements of the performance that would be familiar to him and to his time, including the idea that this is instead of really being acts one or two, they're known as masks and are sort of discreet little performances, little vignettes almost of the story which would have been familiar to Shakespeare and Elizabethan society as well as Henry VIII used to love masks and used to dress up and participate in them himself.
- [03:12]
Pat Wright
Right, right. Well, we'll talk a little bit more about masks, but let's listen to some of this introductory music as we're setting the scene and getting ready for this amazing entertainment, this Shakespearean story with a lot of embellishments. Well, now we're in the mood for this lovely entertainment. Let's talk a little bit about these These masks, this English form of. Honestly, it was courtly entertainment originally. These productions that would be put on with costumes and scenery and often expected to have machinery, something that would drop in the gods from the heavens or fountains from the earth. All kinds of decorations and tableaus and really just scenes. Maybe supernatural, maybe rustic, but they don't necessarily have to be propelling the story forward.
- [06:49]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And I think the machinery part is such an interesting element of this because it really gave sort of proto engineers of the time and of previous royal courts the chance to apply their skills. And I remember at least reading that Henry and Elizabeth both had a set of royal engineers whose entire job was to come up with more and more fantastical elements of machinery for these masks. And everybody was always kind of trying to one up themselves and create spectacles that to us today, even, I think, would seem incredibly advanced.
- [07:26]
Pat Wright
Absolutely. And even though this style of entertainment originated in the court in the 17th century, this style of entertainment spreads beyond the court. And someone like Pell is doing this in a public theater. So taking some of the style that had always been appreciated by the English of a certain rank is now being made more accessible to more and more people in England. So as an opera, as something we are presenting here on Opera for Everyone, this work is a fascinating moment in the history of opera for a national style. Henry Purcell, it's believed if he had lived longer, he was in his mid-30s when he died. Sadly, it's believed that if he had lived longer, he would have had the opportunity to establish a true style of English opera that was distinct from, say, the French or the Italian style of opera. Now, of course, he took from those styles of opera and he incorporated elements, but he also embraced the English style, using the masks, mixing dialogue with these presentations. Sadly, that was not to be. It was Handel who really becomes the dominant Baroque force in England at this time. He's a German fellow who trained in Italy and comes over and most of his operas are presented in Italian, of course, later on, he's got oratorios in English of Messiah being the most famous of those. But Purcell really is so respected by historians of music as somebody who had a vision for how to move this new style of entertainment in his own country. Even Handel himself said that had Purcell lived, Purcell was a much better musician than he. Which is quite a comment.
- [09:23]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, it makes you. Makes you sad. Of all the operas that could have. That we could have had.
- [09:28]
Pat Wright
Yeah, yeah. Well, let's be clear here. When we say it's a. It tends to be referred to as a semi opera, not a full opera, that there is spoken dialogue. And we know when you have spoken elements in an opera, it's not fixed the way it's going to be fixed with words and music. And you've got to have that. You know, the music will stay, the words will stay if they are composed and put together. But the spoken part, there's a lot of room for change and wiggling. And we see any presentation in modern day of this, there's tremendous variety. Directors, producers have huge latitude. They can lift wholesale, essentially, the whole play from Shakespeare and intersperse it with these musical pieces that Purcell has written, or they can shorten it. And that's probably what was done, shortened and shifted a bit even in Purcell's day. But it's a fascinating work of art because it's got this flexibility.
- [10:32]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And I think it's interesting, too, because the scenes that we'll talk about, the masks, are not really perfectly related to the play itself, its source material.
- [10:44]
Pat Wright
Putting it kindly. Yes.
- [10:46]
Kathleen Vanderwil
It's a very metaphorical stretch, I would say. I mean, I can make a spirited argument, and I will, that they very much go with the spirit of Shakespeare's play, but Shakespeare's play is more threaded through in the spoken elements than really acted out in the mask bits.
- [11:05]
Pat Wright
Yeah. For instance, none of the major characters are singers.
- [11:10]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Right, right. And the symmetry of it is really more, as I said, in the metaphorical elements of it, in the sense that we know that this was. It featured a mask at the end, which is a hymn to marriage, basically, to marri. And that was added to this piece in order to commemorate a wedding anniversary of the two reigning monarchs, William and Mary, at the time. And that, to me, is kind of the bow that ties everything together, because Midsome Night's Dream and this are very much about fecundity, fertility, married love, the coming together of people and nature. So there's definitely connections here. But, yes, if you come to the Faerie Queen expecting to see a midserm Night's Dream, that is not quite the experience you're going to have, or it.
- [12:05]
Pat Wright
Might be, depending on who's producing it, with a lot of extra musical interludes. I should probably mention that Purcell, like a lot of his contemporaries, wrote lots of music for the theater. And even we know Shakespeare's own day 100 years Previous to this. There was music interspersed in his plays as well. But Purcell's not setting any of Shakespeare's words to music. And in fact, the librettist himself is not 100% certain it's believed that the librettist was the theater manager, Thomas Betterton, but we don't know that 100%.
- [12:44]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Well, considering that we don't know 100% who Shakespeare even was, that continues in a long tradition.
- [12:52]
Pat Wright
Well, let's listen to this scene of the drunken poet, which is very early on in our show and very interesting. This is potentially making fun of poets in general, those people who earn their living writing. But it's also part of a tradition that has children, the drunk speaking truth.
- [13:23]
Oberon
I do, I do, I do confess I drank, drank as I live, boys As I drive, boys As I live, boys I drank as I live voice Cry as I live voice As I live voice.
- [13:58]
Kathleen Vanderwil
What, uncle?
- [13:59]
Oberon
What people? Speak, speak. What's beau. Speak, speak, speak, speak. What's going on? What's going on? Speak, speak, speak. If you will know it. I am, I am a sweet scurvy skirt, skirt, skirt. Scurvy, scurvy, scurvy poet. I confess, I confess, I confess, I confess I'm very, very, very, very poor. Pray do not, do not page me so good, good, good. Thee a devil let me, let me, dear devil, let me go. And as I hope to wear the vase and as I hope to wear the vase, I write a sonnet. I will write. I write a sonnet in.
- [16:10]
Pat Wright
You're listening to opera for everyone. And that was from the Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell of the late 17th century, based on Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Well, a drunken poet. I don't remember that from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Kathleen.
- [16:27]
Kathleen Vanderwil
No, not technically a character in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but there's a lot of symmetry here, as I mentioned before. So we in sort of plot territory here. Right before we get to the drunken Poet, we meet the main characters, one might say, of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is Titania, the fairy queen herself. And she will meet her husband, the king, Oberon, as well. But there's a central conflict that begins the fairy plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is that Titania and Oberon, who are married, are having a marital spat.
- [17:07]
Pat Wright
I have a quick question because I've always heard Titania. It's Titania.
- [17:12]
Kathleen Vanderwil
It's pronounced both ways. We have no idea how Shakespeare pronounced it. So I've heard it pronounced both ways, depending on if you're British on your. British or American.
- [17:20]
Pat Wright
Okay. All right, carry on.
- [17:21]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, so they are having a marital spat, and it is mainly focused around a small and sort of confusing plot point, which is that Titania seems to have had a votress, a serving woman who gave birth to a child and died in childbirth. And she has decided to rear the child with her fairy retinue. And Oberon is jealous of her love for this child and her love for the mother, and so wants to steal the child away and make him one of his fairy servants. Which all seems like very internal fairy politics. More so than we need to get into, maybe, But.
- [18:00]
Pat Wright
But I love seeing when this is staged. It's great because retinue, they each have their own retinue of these fairy world creatures. They're generally costumes, they're distinguished. You can tell who belongs to whom. But as befitting their status as king and queen, they have all these people around them. But the spat over this child is powerful in their relationship.
- [18:25]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And it's. We. We don't know enough about it really, to say too much as to who this woman was, how old the child even is. But it very much fits into this idea of a changeling, which is a human child that gets raised in the fairy world and then usually gets swapped out for a fairy child that gets raised in the human world. And the idea of the fairy and the human world sort of melding into each other or something being kind of off about a child, obviously, that's another focus of a lot of literature. There's something wrong with the children. And in this time period and in Shakespeare's time period, there's a lot of emphasis on this idea of fairy. The fairy world. The fairy queen, Elizabeth I was referred to that way sometimes. And so you see that fascination continues with this sort of otherworldly, beautiful, sort of cruel, perhaps morally gray set of people and world where anything could happen. So that's where we are when we enter this and that fairy retinue that we mentioned. They will do Titania or Titania's bidding. They will do Oberon's bidding. And in this case, Titania has said that they need to go seize every mortal who enters into her territory and torment them in a sort of joking, ish way.
- [19:47]
Pat Wright
Like fairies do.
- [19:49]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Very much like fairies do. Yeah. And that's where we meet this drunken poet. And they torment him. They play tricks on him, as is their want, and they. They make him confess that he's a drunk and a terrible poet and only release him after he promises to write them a song of praise.
- [20:08]
Pat Wright
Which is just what you want a terrible poet to do for a while, right? Exactly.
- [20:11]
Kathleen Vanderwil
It's all a little topsy turvy, but I think, you know, there's probably something in here about the drunken terrible poet being maybe a stand in for Shakespeare or a joke about Shakespeare, but we'll leave it at that.
- [20:23]
Pat Wright
Right. Quite possibly just to ground us in the time period when this is appearing. We know it's about a hundred years after Shakespeare first produces A Midsummer Night's Dream. Purcell's Faerie Queen premieres in 1692. So late 17th century, 1693. There's a revision that adds a few additional songs, including this one featuring the drunken poet. And just a comment from about 30 years earlier, speaking of well known authors, Samuel Pepys, the diarist, mid 17th century, had gone to see a performance of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. And did he love it? No, he didn't love it. He wrote that Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream was the most insipid, ridiculous play he ever seen in his entire life. So, you know, there's silliness in this play for sure. A Midsummer Night's Dream. So even our much revered, beloved Shakespeare came in for criticism. In fact, elements of his plays were somewhat out of fashion in some of the Restoration entertainments. And when I say Restoration, that's the historical period when the monarchy is restored after the, the Puritans took over. Well, we don't need to go into all the history there, but. But Shakespeare was not unrelentingly admired. He was not up on a pedestal. People did feel like they could play around with his stuff. And that's exactly what happens in this, in this fairy Queen.
- [22:04]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. And I would say that that reverence for Shakespeare is actually even more, more recent than we would think. Up through the end of the Victorian age, so up through the entire 19th century, people were producing revised copies of Shakespeare's plays that changed the ending, that changed different characters, especially taking tragedies and making them comedies or giving them a happy ending, making so that Lear and Cordelia do not die at the end of Lear, that sort of thing, or Hamlet figures everything out in time and there's no fight. Creating basically family friendly versions of Shakespeare was a big cottage industry and a lot of people altered versions that they, that they thought were the correct version.
- [22:48]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [22:48]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So it's really only recently that we've come to a place where we really revere the text as the text, with modern academic criticism really leading the charge there. But we can even see that in this opera it's very much more focused on the fairy world. Even though we haven't talked too much about this, there is a whole sort of spoken scene where we set the Stage. Before we get to this drunken poet mask. It's clear that that's just very. That's not the point of this.
- [23:16]
Pat Wright
This is.
- [23:16]
Kathleen Vanderwil
We want to get to the fairy world as soon as possible.
- [23:19]
Pat Wright
Well, the fairy world is where the music is, it's where the dance is. There's a lot of dance in this, a lot of instrumental music which is accompanying dance. But let's just take a moment, because we are saying this is based on A Midsummer Night's Dream. Let's just take a moment to talk a little bit about this story that a lot of people watching this, even if it's not presented, probably know that there are more or less three classes of people or three classes of characters in this show. The. The people, the Athenians, although they're never referred to as such in this production. You've got the. The mortals, the highborn mortals. You've got the lowborn mortals, the rustics, the people who are going to be. Well, we'll meet them soon. And you've got the fairy world.
- [24:06]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And we start in Shakespeare's play and in this opera, during the overture, we see laid out the Athenian world. And yes, the Athens part of it is a bit odd because it's not Athens. It is and is not Athens. It's very much Athens by way of London or sometimes it seems more like Tuscany, I think is a lot of the. The productions that I've seen set it more in like an Italianate setting. But it's. It's. He's a duke, you know, a quote unquote duke. He is English royalty, basically. His name is Aegeus and his daughter Hermia, he wants her to marry one particular man whose name is Demetrius, but Helena wants to marry a different man named Lysander. And another woman, Helena, is in love with Demetrius. So we start with discord. We start in the mortal world, the highborn mortal world is discord. People are not with who they should be with. A daughter is going against her father, and by going against her father, she's actually also going against the law, because it is the law that the father can choose where he, quote, unquote, disposes of his daughter, as they say in. In the play, with some really unfortunate language.
- [25:26]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [25:27]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And.
- [25:28]
Pat Wright
But it's the law.
- [25:29]
Kathleen Vanderwil
But it's the law. And so we have the duke and his decisions to whether he should enforce the law. We have Hermia's father and Hermia, their dispute. We have the four lovers who are not with who they should be with. So we start with chaos, really, in the Mortal world. And then on the other side of things, as you said, in the lower born mortals, there is also some chaos in the sense that they, the people we are shown are tradesmen who are rehearsing a play. Yes.
- [26:03]
Pat Wright
Love a play within a play.
- [26:04]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, always. So Shakespeare loves that. Rehearsing a play. So in some ways pretending to be what they are not too. They are about to pretend to be highborn mortals in this play and they are trying to rehearse. And everyone has their own sort of unique personalities and they're very much bumbling comedic characters, but they are going to mimic sort of the love of the higher born characters. So we meet all of the mortals in their various dramas and soap operas before we meet the fairy world. But it is the fairy world that will be the catalyst for the action of the play. So it makes sense to me that we bring in the music once we enter that universe.
- [26:47]
Pat Wright
One interesting piece that I learned in researching this is that the character Bottom, who is, I would say, the larger than life, the main rustic of the lowborn in this play within a play. And he will very much interact with the fairy world. But he was such a popular character that there was, I don't know, should we call it fan fiction? There were other plays written about him and his exploits or plays just focusing on him. So even though Shakespeare may not have been revered to the point where his work couldn't be touched, he was admired to the point that his characters were embraced and then put into other dramas, other entertainments.
- [27:31]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. And we're a little early for the place where novels will start getting the same treatment, but it's in the water a little bit. One of my favorite things that's coming on the horizon in around 1740s, 1750s, is you'll get the first epistolary novel. First novel that basically consists of letter writing, but one of the first romance novels, one of the first novels in the English language, which is Pamela by Samuel Richardson. And that had a similar effect where people were so intrigued by this fictional story, this fictional character, that there was all sorts of fan fiction written about her, written about other characters. There was merch, there was, you know, you could buy a Pamela mug to put your beer in, you know, and that kicks off. And we see this with Goethe too. You know, you and I have done a lot of talking about the sorrows of young Werther. And there was werter merch too. So it's always funny to look back and see that. That impulse that we see today, that commercialized fantastical Obsession with fictional characters that is as old as literature itself.
- [28:39]
Pat Wright
Well, between every act in this entertainment, of this five act entertainment, there's music abounding. Again, we need more dancing. So let's hear a little bit more of this before we move on to Act 2. We are now ready for Act 2 of Henry Purcell's the Fairy Queen. We aren't presenting any of the dialogue that might be in a production of this, the Shakespeare scenes or Shakespeare similar scenes where characters are speaking to one another. But all this music, all the singing, this is all Purcell. And this is original, by the way. This, this work was lost after the 17th century when it was performed. It was lost and presumed lost forever. But it was found somewhere in the Royal Academy of Music in the early 20th century, which is fascinating.
- [30:32]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Wow. Makes you wonder what else is lost in the archives.
- [30:36]
Pat Wright
Doesn't it though? Doesn't it? I imagine people have combed through that now, but I mean, you never know, things do, do turn up. All right, act two is going to begin here and there's an opportunity for a little more of the Shakespeare plot to emerge.
- [30:54]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. So we meet Oberon's right hand man here comes into play and a very famous Shakespearean character, which is the character of Puck. Puck is some kind of fairy spirit who as I said, works for Oberon and is known as. There's several monologues that Puck is given throughout the Shakespeare play. It's a wonderful part for an actor about who Puck is. And Puck talks about himself a lot as he's a trickster. He delights in tricking mortals and fairies alike. He loves to cause trouble in every different way and can transform himself.
- [31:39]
Pat Wright
He's a Chaos agent.
- [31:41]
Kathleen Vanderwil
He's a Chaos agent. He's kind of a Loki figure. He's, you know, there's that vision of the version of the trickster in a lot of different mythologies and Puck very much fills that role here. So Puck finds out where Titania and her other fairies are going to be dancing and keeping their revels. And Puck goes to her and says, you know, you have to understand, Oberon is looking for you. He is angry that you have not given this changeling boy to him. And then Titania and Oberon encounter each other and they have a big blow up fight here. Titania accuses Oberon of being unfaithful to her. And there's a strange sort of implication here which is not, I don't remember this particularly from the Shakespeare play, but there's an implication here that maybe Oberon is in love With Hermia. Then there's maybe also an. And he's like, come from her wedding. Yeah. There's also an implication maybe that he wants to take the changeling boy because he's in love with him. Or, you know, there's a lot of. It's a very complex, lover's fat here.
- [32:51]
Pat Wright
These are two strong, headstrong characters who are not going to be rolled over by the other one, Right?
- [32:58]
Kathleen Vanderwil
I mean, they're both gods. And in a way, there is no reason why either should bend to the other. Unless we're talking traditional gender roles here. But those do not seem to be at play, at least in this scene. So Oberon vows to get revenge on her for refusing to give up this boy. And he has Puck get a magical whatsit. In this case, a flower. And he explains to us, the audience, that if you take this flower and you take some of the juice or the pollen and you rub it on a human's or a fairy's eyes while they're sleeping, when they wake up, the next thing they see, no matter what it is, if it's a bear or a person or a monster, they will fall in love with that thing.
- [33:48]
Pat Wright
Yes. What could go wrong?
- [33:49]
Kathleen Vanderwil
What could go wrong? So he wants to use this to humiliate Titania. And so he gets Puck to grab it for him. But while Puck is gone, Oberon is watching as the four lovers we mentioned before come into the woods. They have run away. So Hermia and Lysander have run away from her father, and they have to get through the woods to get to another part of the country where he has an aunt who will shelter them. They're gonna get married.
- [34:19]
Pat Wright
So they have this perfect escape plan, Lysander and Hermia, that they're going to escape. But of course, it's not perfect because they let someone in on the secret, Right?
- [34:29]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And also they have to go through the woods, which are very difficult to get through, and that's what kind of trips them up. But, yes, she's told her best friend, who's Helena, and Helena trying to curry favor with Demetrius, the man who's in love with Hermia and who she's in love with. As you can see, this gets very complicated very fast.
- [34:48]
Pat Wright
The father, who is the one who's in charge of her fate, wants Hermia to marry Demetrius. Right? And that's why she's going to be punished if she doesn't.
- [34:58]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Right? So Helena has told Demetrius that Hermia and Lysander have run away. And so Demetrius follows them, and Helena follows Demetrius. And so all four of them are in the woods and are running around enacting the soap opera. And there's, you know, scenes of. There's a love scene between Hermia and Lysander. There's a scene of Helena trying to convince Demetrius to love her and him scorning her. And as I said, big soap opera. Oberon watches this whole thing chuckling.
- [35:33]
Pat Wright
Yes. But seeing that things are out of joint.
- [35:35]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes.
- [35:36]
Pat Wright
Seeing that the couples are not properly aligned.
- [35:39]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Right. And we already know from what Titania said that he has some interest, at least in these mortals, in Hermia. She's very beautiful and everybody seems to love her, so maybe that's why. But he decides he's going to put things right. So he uses. He's going to use the flower to put things right here. But in a famous instance of you should do things yourself, he tells Puck to do it.
- [36:01]
Pat Wright
Yeah, Chaos agent. That's who you want to do the important task.
- [36:05]
Kathleen Vanderwil
The chaos agent is not quite. Yeah. So that's where we leave the play. Part of this scene is the flower has been fetched, the orders have been given, and we are about to experience some chaos.
- [36:21]
Pat Wright
So let's hear a little bit of this music that's going to be played. There, of course, will be dancing as well, when Titania is ready to take her rest. And her fairies will. Will be with her, and they will help lull her in comfort to sleep.
- [37:22]
Oberon
Sa. Nothing. Queen.
- [38:45]
Pat Wright
Titania is getting ready for her rest. And a lot goes on here. It. It does remind me of this concept of the masks, which were entertainments for the kings and queens, the royal personages. But here we have a character playing the character of knight will sing. Then we have a character who is mystery singing. These are all in this shadowy fairy world. Secrecy is another character. And then the chorus will let us know that she is now asleep.
- [39:56]
Oberon
Sweet.
- [41:03]
Kathleen Vanderwil
This is opera for everyone. The last time we saw our fairy queen, she was drifting, drifting off to sleep, as were all of the other characters. And as soon as they are asleep, and we've had these characters representing different large ideas like mystery and night, they have drifted away. Oberon sees his chance, and he. While she is vulnerable, he goes to her and he lays this pollen or this juice onto her eyelids as she sleeps. And he wishes that she will awake only when some horrible monster comes by. Obviously, he's. He's taking a big risk here, because who knows when she's gonna wake up. I think there's an idea that maybe she'll wake up when some Wonderful man wakes her up and then she'll fall in love with someone who's not her husband. But in this case, he's hoping that it's something embarrassing for her.
- [42:00]
Pat Wright
Well, and hasn't he put Puck on the job to make sure it is something humiliating for her?
- [42:07]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, not quite yet, but he will. Yes. We're a little ahead, but yes, he will. And next we see Puck also do the same. Puck is sort of a. He's like a silly version of Oberon almost the way that the rude mechanicals or the tradesmen mortals who are doing this play, they represent sort of like silly versions of the higher up mortals. So does Puck sort of represent this sort of silly version of Oberon? And so we see him do a worse job at what Oberon just did, which is that he finds Demetrius and he finds Lysander. And he means to put the juice on Demetrius's eyes, but instead he puts it on Lysander's eyes.
- [42:54]
Pat Wright
Well, because, let's be fair, Oberon has given slightly unclear instructions. You'll know him by his clothing, that you know he's from Athens or. Or however Oberon might want. But it was something that could apply equally to Lysander or Demetrius. So I always feel a little sympathy for Puck there, because it's understandable.
- [43:16]
Kathleen Vanderwil
It's true the instructions are unclear. You can't hold him responsible. But anyway, either way, he puts the juice on the wrong man's eyes. Setting us up for another moment of tension where everyone is asleep and we know something's gonna happen, something bad when everybody wakes up. But we're going to keep them asleep for a little while longer. And that is the end of Act 2.
- [43:36]
Pat Wright
Yes, and more music and probably more dancing as well. This is Henry Purcell's the Faerie Queen on opera for everyone. A real treat from the Baroque period. 1692, late 17th century, a century past Shakespeare. We're having a reinterpretation of this story with lots of extra music and dancing and. And hopefully machinery too, if we're seeing it on the stage. Things coming from below, things dropping in from above. But at the end of Act 2 of our four act opera, everyone seems to be asleep except maybe Puck and Oberon. Our four mortals are asleep. We have no idea where the rustics are, those. Those tradesmen who are going to put on a play. But we know the fairy queen is asleep and we know our four troubled highborn lovers are asleep. And there's been a little nonsense with flower juice.
- [45:30]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Well, actually one other person is awake, so actually only Three of the lovers are sleeping. Helena, although she's very tired, she has been chasing after Demetrius and trying to find him because he has run, literally run away from her. He doesn't know where Hermia and Lysander are. He's trying to find them, and he starts to suspect maybe she's told him a lie, that maybe she's tried to lure him into the woods so she can, I don't know, convince him to love her.
- [45:57]
Pat Wright
Yes. And Helena has been subject to so much abusive talk.
- [46:02]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes.
- [46:03]
Pat Wright
So many insults.
- [46:04]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And she takes it all. She says, you know, she says, I wish you would just use me the way that you use your dog. Which is a horror. Poor girl.
- [46:12]
Pat Wright
Poor girl.
- [46:13]
Kathleen Vanderwil
She's like, just let me follow you like I'm your dog. If you want to hit me like your dog, that's fine. So just. Poor, poor girl. She really deserves more.
- [46:23]
Pat Wright
Show's not over yet.
- [46:24]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. So everybody is apart. Hermia and Lysander are together, asleep. Demetrius has fallen asleep, but he has not found them. He's off on his own, too, and Helena is looking for him. So she stumbles upon Lysander and Hermia asleep. And at first she's worried they're so. They look so out of it, she fears that they're dead. And so she runs to Lysander and she shakes him and tries to wake him up. And he wakes up. And of course, we know as the audience that he's had the love juice put on his eyes. So when she wakes him up, he falls madly in love with Helena.
- [47:05]
Pat Wright
Utterly confusing Helena.
- [47:07]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So now, just to keep everything straight, our chart is Hermia is in love with Lysander, Lysander is in love with Helena, Helena is in love with Demetrius, and Demetrius is in love with Hermia. So it is a perfect circle of wrongness.
- [47:23]
Pat Wright
Wrongness, yes. Not so perfect.
- [47:25]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And so Lysander takes off after Helena because she thinks you're. You're joking. She thinks this is a horrible joke that you're playing on me. You can't possibly be in love with me. You're making fun of me. And I thought you were my friend. And so she runs from him. He chases. So we have the reversal. Instead of Helena running after Demetrius, we now have Lysander running after Helena. Hermia is left alone, but as soon as they're gone, she wakes up out of a nightmare. And the nightmare is very metaphorical. It was that there was a serpent that was eating her heart. And so, just as the love of her life is taken from her, so she sees that Lysander is gone and she is. Terror strikes her. She thinks perhaps he has been killed or that he's abandoned her. And so everybody is in disarray and she runs off after him to try and find him. Poor mortals.
- [48:23]
Pat Wright
Yes, poor mortals. This fairy world, it's confusing, it's. Nothing is quite straight. But their life. Even before they entered the wood, the fairy wood was a mess.
- [48:35]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes.
- [48:35]
Pat Wright
And it's just gotten messier with these juicy flowers and everything going on over.
- [48:42]
Kathleen Vanderwil
On thought I'll fix this. So simple. And instead it's. It's far worse than it was before.
- [48:48]
Pat Wright
Yes. Yes. Well, we have more chance for more dancing and more singing. And as I said earlier, the songs are never sung by these main characters in the story. They are sung as decoration, as filling out the world. They might be sung by the fairies, they might be sung by other groups of mortals, but here we have a dryad who is singing about love's sweet passion and the torment that it brings. This really is representing this off kilter nature of love, this. This suffering that Helena is feeling because she feels like no one loves me. And now they're making fun of me too. Hermia, who's. She's had this terrible dream and she's about to find out that her true love, Lysander, rejects her. And so we have a lament from one of the dryads and the chorus joins in as well. Well, things are definitely out of whack in fairy world here. In the Midsummer Night's Dream, in the Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell, nobody's with the person they need to be with. We don't have smooth sailing yet, but it's okay because we're right in the middle of our show. Lots of music, lots of dancing to come, but tell me more about what's going on with these characters.
- [51:13]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, so we leave the mortal highborns where they are, which is in chaos. But as soon as they leave, then we get the lowborn mortals, which is. You know, Shakespeare loves to do this, where he has characters that are foils for each other or complementary appear either right after each other in the same scene to show you something about each character. So in this case, we have the tradesmen. They come into that clearing where the lovers have been and they start to try and rehearse this play. And the play, as we mentioned before, is meant to be for Hermia's wedding, or really not just Hermia's wedding, but like the wedding of everybody we have. They don't really mention this a lot, but there's Also, the Duke is getting married, too, so we're going to end up having three weddings.
- [52:00]
Pat Wright
Yeah. And that sometimes gets left out of this musical piece, this Purcell piece entirely.
- [52:05]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Right. Because it's a very small piece of the narrative. But anyway, there's a wedding, a royal wedding, and we need to prepare for it. So they are coming up with a play. There has been a sort of general call that anybody who wants to perform at this wedding can audition, and if their play is chosen, then they get rewarded handsomely. And so these mortals who don't, I think, have all that much acting experience, perhaps, but have decided to try their luck.
- [52:36]
Pat Wright
No, it's their big chance.
- [52:38]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So we have people who are. Their professions are otherwise. So there's a tailor, there's a tinker, there is something called a joiner, so a carpenter. People who are used to doing. Working with their hands and now are trying to do this play. And we get an idea of what the play is and who's going to be performing it. So we have. Primarily, the most important person to know is Bottom. As you mentioned before, Bottom is going to be playing a character named Pyramus in this play, who is the hero, the lover and his bride to be. Her name is Thisbe, and Thisbe is played by a character named Flute.
- [53:17]
Pat Wright
And these are characters from Greek myth? No.
- [53:20]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Sort of. Yes, they are. It's like a. It's a. It's fan fiction, I would say.
- [53:26]
Pat Wright
All right, more fan fiction.
- [53:28]
Kathleen Vanderwil
This is not a direct recounting of any specific story, but it is taking characters and stories and kind of twisting it into a version of a story that is probably recognizable, which is two lovers who are separated by the fact that their families are enemies. If. Stop me if this sounds like something you've read before. And in fact, they're separated literally by a wall between their family's gardens. And they meet and they whisper through a chink in the wall, and their parents have forbidden them to be together. So that is sort of the main story. Hilariously, there are some weird elements that get added in, including when Thisbe and Pyramus go to meet, they are scared away by a lion. So I'm not exactly sure where this is supposed to be set, but there's a lion.
- [54:18]
Pat Wright
I just love the fact that it's this very dramatic and tragic story, but it is played entirely for laughs.
- [54:28]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes.
- [54:28]
Pat Wright
The fact that one of the tradesmen is the wall and his fingers are the chink in the wall, and the fact that Bottom wants to play all the characters because he believes in his own abilities as an actor. It's just the whole thing. It's a tragedy, but it's played for laughs.
- [54:45]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And it's funny too, because for us. For us, Right? So that's my favorite part about this in the play is it's played for laughs by Shakespeare, but by the characters like Bottom, it is played straight. It is 100% serious. And they are so committed to this play and doing it the best way they can. But they're so bad at it that it is funny for us. So anyway, they are rehearsing, and as you said, Bottom wants to play every role. Plut doesn't want to play a woman because he's got a beard that he has to shave off. It's all very funny. And as they are rehearsing this, Oberon has been watching them. He is a great watcher.
- [55:24]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [55:25]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And Oberon decides that Bottom, who's been particularly ridiculous in this play, is perfect for the purpose of turning Titania's punishment into something truly horrid. And so he has Puck take Bottom and lead him away from everybody else and transform him so that he has the head of an ass of a donkey. Bottom is not aware that he has this on him. And so as soon as this happens, he goes back to his friends and they think he's a monster, and they run from him. And then he stumbles upon the fairy queen. She wakes up because of his loud braying.
- [56:08]
Pat Wright
Oh, yes, but she has that juice on her eyes.
- [56:12]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Exactly. And so she sees him and falls in love with him instantly. And she loves him so much that she wants to anoint him with flowers and fruits. And she's murmuring these love words to him, and she wants some entertainment for him. So she. She's asking her fairies to sing to him and to feed him. And Oberon is watching all of this as well. And finally, the last bit of plot that we. We get before we'll give you some more music is that Oberon has realized that Puck has messed up and has anointed the eyes of the wrong man of the four lovers and asks him to find them and put the matters right as soon as possible. And so, hopefully, Puck will get it right this time. But no promises. And that's how we. We end the act.
- [57:04]
Pat Wright
Well, we. We end the act plot wise. But there's a lot of singing and dancing. A lot of singing and dancing. There's great entertainment. It's really like this mask is being presented to this queen and her consort of the moment, this rustic with the head of a donkey. She. She enjoys very much all the entertainments that the fairies put on for her, and we're going to hear a little bit of that now.
- [57:41]
Oberon
R.A.
- [58:20]
Pat Wright
You'Re listening to Opera for Everyone, a radio show and podcast that makes opera understandable, accessible and enjoyable for everyone. I'm your host today, Pat Wright, joined by special guests, co host Kathleen Vandewille.
- [58:35]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Opera for Everyone airs Sundays from 9 to 11am Mountain Time on 89.1 Khol in Jackson, Wyoming. Khol is Wyoming's only community radio station.
- [58:47]
Pat Wright
If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the Opera for Everyone podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts and when you go, you can find a rich trove of past episodes.
- [58:56]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Stay with us. The second half of today's show is coming right up.
- [59:37]
Pat Wright
Welcome back to the second half of Opera For Everyone where we are listening to and talking through an opera based on Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. It's Henry Purcell's the Fairy Queen. I'm Pat Wright, your host, and I'm here today with Kathleen Vanderwil. Kathleen, Kathleen, welcome. And thank you so much once again for helping me with the show and Shakespeare in particular.
- [60:00]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, always happy to talk Shakespeare. Always happy to talk opera. And this is a unique one.
- [60:06]
Pat Wright
It is. And just dropping a little hint here. There's more than one opera that's based on this Shakespeare play, Midsummer Night's Dream.
- [60:15]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Oh, well, more to come on that, perhaps.
- [60:18]
Pat Wright
Yeah, there just might be. There just might be. Well, we've left our characters with all the beautiful music, putting them to sleep. And while they're sleeping, I'd like to take a moment and thank the musicians and the performers on the CD that we've been listening to. This is a recording that was made in Vienna in 1994 by the Baroque music ensemble Consentus Musicus Vin. It's my best effort at pronouncing it properly, but it's a musical group that was founded by conductor Nicholas Harnonkourt and his wife, who's also a violinist, Alice Harnoncourt. They were with the Vienna Symphony, but he really wanted to conduct, and both of them had a passion for historically informed performance. They did tons of research before they ever did their first public concert. They are really leaders in the movement for period instrument performances. You can hear that it sounds a little different from a modern performance, and it's really due to the Harninkourtz that we have this ability to listen to some of this music a little closer to what it might have sounded like in the 17th century. So thank you. Nicholas Harnoncourt here is the conductor. We have the choir, the Arnold Schoenberg Choir under the direction of chorus master Erwin Ortner. And we have three sopranos, Barbara Bonney, Elizabeth von Magnus, Sylvia McNair, counter tenor, Michael Chance, Lawrence Dale, tenor, and two basses, Robert hall and Anthony Michaels Moore. Thank you everyone involved in this beautiful, beautiful music. And thank you particularly to the Harnenkurz for being part of this movement. It's kind of interesting to me that this is a recording made in Vienna of an English language performance. But of course, we're accustomed to it in English language speaking countries, hearing music from other places in the native language. It's just sort of fun to have that twist going on here. Well, Kathleen, before we carry on with any more of our talk of this opera, I want to just say thank you for the work that you do in your blog, Constructive Criticism. Past listeners of Opera for Everyone may have heard me do a shout out for Constructive Criticism, your blog before. If you haven't checked it out, please do. It's a wonderful compilation of an analysis recommendations that you provide to us. I mean, how do you manage to pick from among all the. It's so varied. That's what I can't quite get over. It's not like you specialize in one particular form of writing or television. It's all of it.
- [63:09]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Oh my goodness. I guess I just. My tastes are totally catholic. They're voracious. I just like everything. So I find myself sort of flitting from one thing to another and that's usually reflected in the blog. I will say I was just looking at the draft section of posts and I have 10 draft posts all on completely different things that I have started and then abandoned.
- [63:30]
Pat Wright
Well, we'd like to read some of those. Finish those up, please.
- [63:33]
Kathleen Vanderwil
I know as soon as I get some time, I'll get those up. But yeah, check it out. I try to be as current as possible, but every once in a while I need to take a month or so off to catch up, which is where I'm at right now. But new post coming soon on all the good TV and books and things that are out there.
- [63:51]
Pat Wright
Oh, wonderful. Yeah, I was thinking of constructive Criticism. Didn't interrupt our conversation, but when you referenced the early epistolary novel Pamela, I thought, oh, this is so Kathleen knowing about all these different works. And you stay current in terms of pop culture, but also you pull in all these other rich historical connections, which is actually part of what I love about it.
- [64:14]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Well, I'M so glad that it is providing useful recommendations. I will definitely recommend you go read Pamela, even though it's from the 18th century too. There's so much out there. And that's one of the reasons I love this opera podcast too, because it brings in so many operas that I probably never would have watched without you. So right back at you.
- [64:37]
Pat Wright
Well, that's why we like doing this together. Okay, everyone, constructive criticism on substack. Kathleen Vanderwyl, please do check it out. I recommend it most highly. And now, Kathleen, it's the Opera Helmet quiz. It's time for you to give us. I mean, this is an impossibility with this story, this semi opera, but with Shakespeare in mind. Could you let us know how we got to the place where our characters are all asleep? And feel free to interject any of the personal music and mask as well.
- [65:10]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, absolutely. So, as you said, it's a little difficult to interweave in a plot sense. The masks, the music of it. So let me first stick to an overview of what's been happening, plot wise, and then we can kind of revisit the different masks. This follows very closely the plot of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. So we have a set of lovers. We have Hermia and her lover Lysander, and we have Helena and someone she wishes was her lover, Demetrius. Everything is a bit mixed up with these four noble humans. They are not in love with the right person. So Herme and Lysander, when we start the play, are in love with each other, but her father has said he wants her to marry Demetrius. Demetrius agrees, wants to marry her, but Helena wants to marry Demetrius. And Hermia and Lysander run away to try and find a place where they can get married without the fear of the Athenian law coming down and separating them or her father separating them. They go into the woods and that.
- [66:14]
Pat Wright
That does not go smoothly, does it? Once they end up in the woods, it does not.
- [66:19]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And they are followed by Demetrius and Helena and everybody kind of gets lost. And while they're wandering around trying to find each other, we have this other sort of set of characters. We have Titania, the fairy queen and her consort, Oberon, king of the fairies. They are also in a relationship dispute, the marital spat. And yes, there's a lot of. We start with discord and I will give you the no spoilers in opera that we are tending towards harmony. Not there yet, but we'll get there.
- [66:52]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes.
- [66:54]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So Titania and Oberon are fighting. Oberon wants revenge, so he sends his sort of court jester sidekick, Puck, to find this magical flower, which if he smears the pollen on someone's eyelids, when they wake up, they'll fall in love with whatever they see, whether that's another person or a monster or an animal. And so he wants to humiliate Titania by doing this to her. Puck finds the flower and Oberon smears the juice or the pollen onto her eyelids. And we have to wait to find out who she's gonna see. And Oberon also has noticed the Athenians running around in discord. And he says, Puck, why don't you fix them too? While we're at it, Very multitasking. But of course, Puck picks the wrong man to put the juice on. He puts the juice on Lysander instead of Demetrius. And Lysander wakes up, sees Helena, falls in love with her. And so now we've got even more discord among our lovers. While all of this has been going on, we have another group of people, never say Shakespeare is simple, who are sort of the lower born tradesmen mortals. And they have entered the woods because they've been looking for a place to practice because they're going to put on a play for a wedding, ostensibly Hermia's wedding to Demetrius, which has been planned, but of course it's not taking place just yet. So they're planning this play. It's called the Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. It's very much a Romeo and Juliet type story. And bottom, the weaver who is playing the lover. Pyramus is sort of the most ridiculous character. He is bombastic. He wants to play every part. He wants to be the hero and the lover and he wants to be the woman and he wants to be the lion and the wall and moon.
- [68:44]
Pat Wright
And he doesn't want the ladies to be afraid of the lion.
- [68:47]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Right, exactly. So he says, oh, I'll roar way that will make them afraid, but will just be like a little snarl. He's got all these great lines. So Oberon sees and Puck sees how foolish he is. And Oberon says, why don't you go and make that man basically have the. The head of a donkey or an ass. And so that happens. And of course Titania wakes up and sees bottom with the head of a donkey on him, falls in love with him, and Oberon's revenge is complete. So everything is in discord at this point. And Oberon starts to feel bad for the Athenians and wants to fix this.
- [69:27]
Pat Wright
That's fascinating to me that he wants to do all of that. After he's. It's so important to him to humiliate the queen. Yes, he needs to humiliate her, but he sees the mortals in discord and actually wants to straighten it out.
- [69:40]
Kathleen Vanderwil
It's true. And he doesn't play with them for his own amusement the way that he does Titania. And in a sense, a lot of the plays, a lot of the versions of this play will sometimes play Puck as playing with them for his amusement, maybe accidentally on purpose, switching the Athenians.
- [69:55]
Pat Wright
Right.
- [69:56]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Because Puck is all about sort of the chaos of it.
- [69:59]
Pat Wright
Right.
- [69:59]
Kathleen Vanderwil
But Oberon is about control, he's about power, and he wants to be in charge of what's happening. And he seems to have affection for especially Hermia. There's a line that he has come to the city to attend her marriage because she's beautiful and he's seen her from afar. So, yeah, he seems to want to straighten things out for them. The chaos can stay in the fairy world, but the mortal world should be not as chaotic.
- [70:27]
Pat Wright
Fascinating. It's a vision of kingship, honestly.
- [70:30]
Kathleen Vanderwil
It is, yeah. And a lot of times this play, you see the king character who we don't see until the. We see him at the very beginning of the play and at the very end, his name is Theseus. He's not in it very often, but usually what happens in the play is they double the role of Theseus and Oberon. So you'll have the same actor play both because symbolically they're representing the same. There's sort of a king of the mortal world, a king of the fairy world, and it's two sides of the same coin.
- [70:56]
Pat Wright
Right.
- [70:56]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So when we left, our troupe of characters, Bottom and Titania are asleep, entwined in each other's arms in love, and the lovers are asleep as well. And hopefully things will be put straight very soon. But we don't know.
- [71:15]
Pat Wright
Oh, you never know in that fairy world. Okay, I'd like to share a few comments about this semi opera, as they call it, or opera, many called it at the time. I had mentioned before that this is relatively early on in the development of opera itself. If you're going to put a date on it, Operas begins right in the beginning of the 17th century in Italy. And this concept spreads somewhat naturally, somewhat by movement of individuals. But Purcell, Henry Purcell, our composer here for this opera, the Faerie Queene, I've mentioned that he. It's a shame that he. I mean, it's always a shame when someone dies young, but. But particularly for the development of the English musical style, it's a real shame because he was doing something different from what other countries were doing. What. What was going on. Yeah, he was influenced by music from other countries on the continent, France, Italy in particular. But he was also pulling from the English musical tradition. And so this reason, it's sometimes called a semi opera, and sometimes people even compare it to. I have a little trouble with this, but they compare it to musicals or opera comique, I would say, because it's spoken dialogue and then some singing. But it's not the main characters who are providing the musical interludes. It's like a play with very elaborate musical interludes, also, this multimedia spectacle. And that's a little review of what we mentioned in the first half. But what I'd like to mention now, on top of that, when you get an opportunity to watch this these days, the variety of productions is vast. You. You could watch this and. And if you didn't understand that the music was the same, if you didn't immediately recognize it, you could think they were entirely different musical presentations. All you have to do is go on to YouTube, look for Purcell the Fairy Queen. Full opera. That's always what you want to put full opera in, if you want to see a full opera and you'll see this variety. There are two productions from the uk, very different. One of them is essentially the Shakespeare play, with these bits cut in probably more direct dialogue from Shakespeare even than Purcell used in his day. We don't know. Some of that is blurry about the libretto and the librettist. The spoken parts, the sung parts, are always the same because they did find a proper score with the words. But there are honestly more available to watch online that don't even have the spoken parts at all, which is interesting because that's not how it was presented in Purcell's day. But it's a way of sticking to what the composer wrote. And then it's up to the director who's going to play these different roles, how am I going to interpret it? And it's very different from each company. I saw one from Spain, one I think that originated in France. All very, very different. And even the two that were from the uk, very different from one another. So I recommend that you check these out. I will say that if you're interested in seeing one that has very much of the Shakespeare in it, that's the Glyndebourne production, either available on the Glyndebourne's own subscription service or through Medici tv, which also has lots of other operas and classical music and in fact, jazz But Medici TV will get you a good version of that one with all the Shakespeare. But on YouTube, you can also see the Eno production, or at least as of the date of our recording, you can see the Eno production, you can see a Spanish production. All kinds of different interpretations of this story. And I mean, that's one of the amazing things about this semi opera and trying to revive something that's as old as this is where we have all the music and words, but we don't necessarily have the other details.
- [75:21]
Kathleen Vanderwil
That's fascinating. And I mean, it reminds me of how over time, the way that people have treated Shakespeare texts themselves as either needing to have total fidelity or feeling like they have a lot of creative license. That's really changed a lot over time. And you can see that it's really only recently that there's this idea that you have to have total fidelity to the Shakespeare text. People in Shakespeare's own day and up through the 19th century were very free with, oh, let me cut this character entirely, or let me rearrange this, or let me put a happy ending where there's not usually one. And many different versions were circulating, many different staged versions. So to see it fit into the history of opera this way, I think is fascinating because this has a good deal of fidelity to the text, at least. I mean, so we assume. We don't know exactly how much of Shakespeare's exact play they did, but it seems plot wise that they've stuck to the general outline. But it would be interesting to see today an opera company perform it with total fidelity to the Shakespeare text. Like, once again, a little bit of a spoiler alert, but we might be talking about Benjamin Britten's version of the.
- [76:38]
Pat Wright
That might happen. Yes.
- [76:39]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Perfect fidelity to the Shakespeare text, I think, maybe to its detriment.
- [76:43]
Pat Wright
Interesting.
- [76:43]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. I mean, it's really changed over time. Shakespeare himself, I think, would think it's silly how much we revere every comma in his text.
- [76:52]
Pat Wright
Yeah. I mean, it's a question of who's doing the editing and the fixing up. Who knows, who knows? But. But here's where we are with the Faerie Queen. There's a variety out there. If you have any chance to see it, do support anyone who's trying to put on this baroque sort of production. It's not his best known opera, but it's right up there. His only full opera, his best known opera is Dido and Aeneas, but this gets treated operatically as well. And thank goodness the music is sumptuous. I find it buttery. Almost. Sometimes the singing is just so gorgeous with the instrumentation. I, I just. It's. I. Because I've watched a lot of different versions of this, I've become quite fond of this music. Okay, I think it's time for us to talk a little bit about Act 4.
- [79:32]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. Well, as I said, we left our. I left all of our characters in somewhat precarious positions. Titania is in the arms of her monster lover. The four lovers are separated and very upset because they are not with the person they should be with. And the tradesmen have bled in terror at what has happened to bottom. So it's time for some authority to come in and fix everything, as we said. So we start with Oberon and Pucker putting to write the four lovers. So they found Demetrius sleeping in the woods and they put the juice on his eyelids so that he falls in love with Helena. And that does indeed happen. Helena has been running away from Lysander, who, if you remember, has fallen in love with her because of the juice. So she's been running from him. Hermia has been running after both of them.
- [80:28]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [80:29]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And Demetrius wakes up, sees Helena, indeed falls in love with her. So maybe we've got one thing fixed.
- [80:36]
Pat Wright
Okay.
- [80:36]
Kathleen Vanderwil
But then, of course, suddenly, instead of two people being in love with Hermia, two people are in love with Helena, and no one's in love with Hermia, so we're still not quite quite together. And this leads to some very funny misunderstandings where Hermia and Helena start to fight because Hermia thinks that Helena has stolen away the man that she loves. And Helena thinks that Hermia and Lysander and Demetrius are playing a trick on her because she can't believe that suddenly these two men have fallen in love with her. It is quite unreasonable that that would have happened as fast as it did.
- [81:17]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [81:17]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So Helena and Hermia start having what can only be described as a 16th century chick fight. They. They try to scratch each other's eyes out, literally. There's some. There's some stereotypes going on here. Hermia is represented as being very short and Helena very tall.
- [81:32]
Pat Wright
There's a lot of wonderful insults being traded.
- [81:36]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Insults, yeah.
- [81:38]
Pat Wright
Great.
- [81:38]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And a fabulous line. Hermia says, you're calling me low and little. She says, I'm not so small that I can't reach my nails into your eyes. And she, you know, attacks Helena. And my favorite filmed production of Midsummer Night's Dream with Kevin Kline as Bottom, has this scene literally become a mud wrestling fight between them? They're in the woods, of course, they fall into a stream that's mostly mud. And so they're just totally. Yeah, it's totally a stereotype. But Demetrius and Lysander are fighting each other in the background for Helena's favorite. And so as much as they've tried to fix things, they really made things worse. Yeah, all four of them are insulting each other. Oberon starts to yell at Puck, and they want to fight. So Oberon says to Puck, he says, I need you to make sure that all four of these people don't run into each other. Lead them far away from each other, so that they run around and exhaust themselves until they fall asleep. But they don't find each other, because if they do, then they're going to kill each other. So that's what Puck does. He leads them around through the forest until they're all so exhausted that once again, they fall asleep.
- [82:52]
Pat Wright
It's been a really exhausting night. Honestly, it's stressful to be in the Dark Wood with all this magic going on.
- [83:00]
Kathleen Vanderwil
I know. Poor kids. They didn't ask for this. So while that has been going on, Titania has been crowning Bottom with flowers and letting her fairies wait on him hand and foot. And there's some very funny scenes here, too, where he keeps asking the fairies to scratch his ears for him, his.
- [83:20]
Pat Wright
Large donkey ears, because if he's got attendants, he might as well use them, Right?
- [83:25]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Right. It's like rubbing. Oh, let me give you these delicacies, these fruits, these wonderful foods. And he says, you know, I really just want some hay and I want some oats. And she's kind of like, oh, okay.
- [83:40]
Pat Wright
That'S what you want, darling.
- [83:42]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So Oberon has been watching this from afar, and he's decided he's punished her enough. And I think it's often played that he's starting to get a little jealous watching the woman he loves be with another man, Technically a man, sort of. And so he decides he's going to remove the juice from her eyes. But in the background, while she's been distracted, the source, the apple of this discord between them has been this young serving boy, this changeling child. And he has taken the changeling child away from her while she's been focused on her new love affair. So he does win what he wanted in the end.
- [84:18]
Pat Wright
Yeah, he got what he wanted. He disabled her effectively.
- [84:22]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, I mean, he really does humiliate her and get what he wants. So he wakes her up, he removes the charm from her eyes, and she sees that she's been in love with this monster. And is horrified. Then Puck takes the ass head off of bottom, restores him to his human shape. And the end of Act 4, before we get our mask and dancing and song is once again, a lot of people are asleep. The four lovers are there. And Puck is going to fix once and for all the problem between them by removing the charm from Lysander's eyes. So that when they all wake up, they will think they've just dreamed this and they will be together.
- [85:03]
Pat Wright
Oh, my goodness. There's so much that goes on in this Shakespeare play. And then you've got this music that. Henry Purcell's music and these lyrics that go with it that are embellishments to it. All this mask going on. We've got the first song sung in this Act, Act 4. It's a celebration of Oberon's birthday. It's fascinating. Actually, one of the productions I watched change the name of King Oberon to King Theseus, who is the king in the mortal world in the Shakespeare play. But the original as we know it. It's King Oberon's birthday that is being celebrated, and it's being celebrated with the rising of the sun. So the clearing of these misunderstandings, clearing of the darkness and the mysteries of night. So let's listen to the chorus. Salute the rising sun. The sun is arriving imminently to celebrate the birthday of King Oberon. And I love this duet that follows right on after that. It's these wonderful two voices working together to celebrate. Let the fifes and the clarions and the shrill trumpets sound. The high hearts of heaven and clangor resound. We're ready. We're ready for something great. Well, we're completely prepared right now for the entrance of the sun. Kathleen, how does this sun enter?
- [88:00]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Well, this mask is largely known as the. The hymn to Apollo, To Phoebus, Apollo. Phoebus just means bright. But Apollo is the. The Greek God of the sun and is often represented when he's called Phoebus, Apollo, it's usually him in his chariot with his horses of fire, sort of bringing the sun up into the sky or making it set.
- [88:23]
Pat Wright
Hey, there's some chance for some nice stage machinery for the descending of the God.
- [88:29]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Very much so.
- [88:30]
Pat Wright
Not just light, but also music, dance. How appropriate is that?
- [88:36]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, I mean, Oberon and Apollo have a lot in common as characters, I would say. And I think in some ways Oberon is probably modeled on an Apollo like God.
- [88:45]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [88:46]
Kathleen Vanderwil
You may know Apollo and Artemis are twins. Those are the two deities of the sun and the moon. And so Apollo is all about the sun and music and dance and life and brightness of the day. And Artemis is about night and hunting and chastity and quiet the woods. So you've got these sort of two sides of the same. The same coin there once again. And, you know, Titania obviously doesn't represent all of the Artemis like things, but she definitely does represent some of those. So I think those are definitely the models for those two characters. So, yeah, this is a hymn to Phoebus, to Apollo and also to the four seasons. So we are very much representing the shift from night to day, the shift of seasons and also the fecundity of lovers, of marriage, of the earth renewing itself. And that is the through line throughout all of these masks.
- [89:43]
Pat Wright
Yes. And I love in this song that Phoebus sings upon entry, he tells us a world in its chaos would return. But for me. So I do hear echoes of Oberon character in there, that I am that powerful. But, you know, he is the God of sun and love and light and dancing and music. So I suppose we can't really accuse him of bragging.
- [90:07]
Kathleen Vanderwil
He can back it up. He's got the bonafides.
- [90:09]
Pat Wright
Right, Right. And the chorus will chime in and call him the. The great parent to us all. Light and comfort of the earth with.
- [90:38]
Oberon
Its chaos, would you return?
- [90:41]
Pat Wright
But for me.
- [91:18]
Kathleen Vanderwil
This is opera for everyone. And you are listening to the mask with a hymn to Phoebus. And we are closing out Act 4 here. And as I mentioned before, this is also a masque dedicated to the four seasons. There's a lot of nature imagery, fecundity, marriage, renewal of the seasons, going from winter to spring, new marriage, and also two lovers who are reconciling. It's a very common theme in music. And I believe in masks from this time period to use the four seasons as a setting, a lens. And probably the most famous that you'll know is Vivaldi's Four Seasons, where each of these. Each of these songs in some way represents auditorily what the feeling of each season is. And we have a similar thing here with the masks of the four different seasons.
- [92:15]
Pat Wright
Kathleen, I love the fact that you mentioned Vivaldi and his work the Four Seasons. Probably if you know Vivaldi at all, you've heard of the work of Four Seasons. And it's not just that this is a theme. I'd like to tie it into the baroque music period in general, because he. Vivaldi is one of the big names of the baroque period. I know I've used this Word Baroque or the Baroque period in music several times. But I'm going to take just a minute to better define that for everyone. The Baroque is one of the musical periods. It follows, well, there's the medieval period, there's the Renaissance period, and then there's the Baroque period, which precedes the big C classical period. We don't have to talk about all of those right now. But Baroque, roughly speaking, in terms of centuries, will be the entire 17th century. So starting in about 1600, which is when we get our first operas and for that matter, our first orchestras, our first what we would recognize as orchestras from about 1600 to about 1750. And Johann Sebastian Bachelor is the biggest name of the Baroque period. He is the High Baroque period. And his death, in fact, is 1750. So with Purcell and his work, this work that we're Looking at now, 1692, 1693, we're well into this Baroque period with Henry Purcell. But other big names of the Baroque period would include Monteverdi. We've talked about a couple of Monteverdi operas. There are only three extant. And we've done on Opera for Everyone. Episode 85 was Orfeo, and episode 99 was the return of Ulysses to his homeland. Those are very, very early operas by this great madrigalist Monteverdi, definitely Baroque. Even though he's got one foot in the late Renaissance period, he also has firmly the other foot in the Baroque period and the development of opera. He's absolutely critical to that, that the other great master that we've listened to here on Opera for Everyone is of course, Georg Friedrich Handel, originally German, becomes a British naturalized citizen. And we've heard many of his operas here. And of course his Messiah, if you're curious, Tommerlano was episode 30, Rhoda Linda, episode 40, Xerxes, episode 57, Agrippina, episode 69, Julio Cesare, Julius Caesar, episode 106, and Messiah, episode 46. That's a lot of Handel that we've done. But honestly, there's so many more that we could do. My CD shelf is filled with Handel operas, so there's some of that in the future. But other people that you would know from this period besides Vivaldi, would be perhaps Telamon, and also Jean Baptiste Lully, who was considered the founder of the French operatic tradition. And then later in the Baroque period, you also have Jean Philippe Rameau, a French opera writer. So we hope to get to some of those operas as well later on. There's so many operas anyway, but this Baroque period is Fascinating to me that you get what's recognizable to us as the modern orchestra. Of course, there are different instruments. The harpsichord is very much present in the Baroque period, and it will fall off a little bit when we move into the classical period and we get the pianoforte, but this development of very intricate harmonies, it was starting in the Renaissance period, but it. It is supercharged and developed. And you can hear this in Purcell's music. The more I learn about this Baroque period, the more of an admirer I become. And I can understand why people like our conductor Harninkourt really become very enamored of the period, because there's just so much going on musically that you have to admire the people who developed this style. And. And of course, people swoon over Bach, understandably. Well, that was just a little aside on the Baroque period. We have one more act to discuss with this opera. Act five.
- [96:22]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes.
- [96:23]
Pat Wright
Where do we go from here?
- [96:24]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. Find out if the chaos gets resolved or not.
- [96:29]
Pat Wright
Well, I don't recall that this is a tragedy.
- [96:33]
Kathleen Vanderwil
True. It is not. It is a comedy, it is a love story. And so no spoilers in opera, but I think things are going to be okay. Yeah. So Act 5 begins where we left the end of Act 4 with the rising of the sun. So day has broken and two characters that we've talked about very briefly who are not present that much in the play itself, which is the Duke Theseus and Aegeus, who is a noble and he is Hermia's father. They are from the mortal world, the noble mortal world. And they have not entered the forest. They have stayed in the town.
- [97:08]
Pat Wright
Yeah. They've not been part of this nonsense at night. Yeah.
- [97:12]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And they have gone hunting in the fields and near the forest, and they come upon Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena just lying there asleep on the ground together. A bit awkward to get woken up by your father in the arms of your lover.
- [97:31]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [97:32]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So they question, then they say, how have you come to be here once again? In some productions I've seen, especially the Kevin Kline movie version, they are naked together. So there's definitely a feeling that if we go back to our, well, Victorian era is not quite right, but our. Our old fashioned morality, I would say to stay out all night with a man you are not married to would be quite shocking. And so both Hermia and Helena, I think there's this idea that because they've stayed out all night with these men, they have to marry them. It would be shameful for them not to marry them.
- [98:06]
Pat Wright
Yes. And I'm going to just interject a little bit of what is going on here with the Persil production is he plays up some of these scandalous aspects because this is the Restoration period. This is after we've got rid of the Puritans. There is sort of more of a joie de vivre that goes on. There is. We let loose a little bit more, and there's a little more enjoyment of innuendo and things that might be considered scandalous. Goodness knows, Shakespeare enjoyed doing that as well.
- [98:34]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Very much so, yeah. And morality in Shakespeare's day, quite. Quite different than what we know of as more Puritan Victorian morality. A little looser. So they are together, and I think there's this idea that the Duke is preparing for his own wedding and he is in love. Once again, this is some storylines that we don't really get in this particular production and in the Shakespeare play are very sketchily written, too. But he is in love. He's going to marry this woman named Hippolyta. And he sees them together, and although he knows that Aegeus has said to his daughter, you have to marry the man I want you to marry, his heart is softened by seeing them together. And the four lovers get up and they protest. But Demetrius says, I don't love Hermia anymore. I love Helena. And I don't know why, but I.
- [99:21]
Pat Wright
Everything seems to be great as he rubs his eye. Yeah.
- [99:24]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. Really? Exactly. And he actually says that. He says, my love for Hermia melted as the snow. And he says, I don't. You know, I don't know what happened, but this is where we're at. And so Aegeus is so mad, but the Duke says, you know what? I think that we should just leave things as they are, and I think everybody should just get married and be happy.
- [99:44]
Pat Wright
Yeah. The four young folk, they've worked it out. Let's not mess it up.
- [99:48]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. And this is a very classic trope, actually, that we see in romance novels a lot and we see in romantic comedy plays from this period up to now. There's always a barrier between the lovers, otherwise there'd be no reason for a story. Right. If there was no barrier. Everybody's happy and everything's fine.
- [100:06]
Pat Wright
Gotta have conflict.
- [100:07]
Kathleen Vanderwil
But the idea is that at the beginning of. Of the story, if it is a romance, and this, I think, very much is, you establish that there's something wrong with the society that's associated with the thing that's keeping these two people apart. One of the characters that's often Is the father character. Yes, and he very much functions that way in this play. And then at the end, you have the father of us all, the king, you know, the big father, and also Oberon, the sort of God who operates as a father figure. He's the one that sets it right and overrides the more local literal father. And so he says, you know what? Let's all be happy, let's not fight anymore. And he betroths Lysander and Hermia to each other. And Demetrius and Helena, they all go away to Athens, they get married, they celebrate. And the people who are left are these tradesmen who've been rehearsing this play. They go back into the woods hoping to find poor Bottom, he's gone missing, because they know they can't put the play on without him. So they do this last ditch. We have to find him.
- [101:13]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [101:13]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And they do. And Bottom has woken up as well. He sees his friends and he says, I've had this wonderful dream and I have to tell you about it. And of course, he wants to have a song composed about it called Bottom's Dream, which is one of the many things that does actually happen in sort of a fan fiction sense. There are plays and songs called Bottom's Dream.
- [101:39]
Pat Wright
So there's no song of Bottom's dream when the Shakespeare play is presented. Or is there?
- [101:46]
Kathleen Vanderwil
No, it's not, because it's presented as a joke. Like he's saying, I'm so great and I had such a great dream that people will have to sing of it. It's an epic. And the joke is, of course, that nobody cares what Bottom's Dream was because Bottom is just a lowly tradesman.
- [102:01]
Pat Wright
Or they'll look forward. And the joke is, Bottom was right. All the fan fiction written about him later on, I mean, that is actually amusing on the long scale.
- [102:12]
Kathleen Vanderwil
He's had this experience. But he tells them about his dream and they all hurry away to perform their play during the wedding. And the scene switches back at the end finally to the duke is talking to the lovers and he says, tell me what happened to you? And they recount their adventures. And he says, oh, you must have been dreaming as well. So there's. In the play especially, there is always a question of were they asleep. Sometimes I see it staged that way as like, literally they were asleep. And this was a dream. And that's the way it's often left is just sort of, you know, maybe this was a dream, but if it was, it ended up being fruitful because it fixed one problem which is quite. Or two problems, really. This experience, for all of the meddling and all of the running around, it fixes two problems. It fixes the problem of Hermia and Lysander not being able to get married. It removes the barrier and it fixes the problem of Demetrius and Helena, because Demetrius is now in love with Helena and they are happily paired.
- [103:14]
Pat Wright
They're reunited because originally Demetrius was supposed to marry Helen before everything changed and Hermia's father said, no, I want Demetrius to marry Hermia.
- [103:24]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah.
- [103:25]
Pat Wright
And everything went wonky.
- [103:26]
Kathleen Vanderwil
A very small detail in the play that Demetrius and Helena were together. Yes. And then he fell in love with Hermia and was unfaithful. And so this is kind of a coming back together. That's true. So, yeah, I mean, the idea is like, things are back to where they should be. Something has gone wrong. There have been barriers. We've resolved that. And because we've resolved the bar barriers in the love story, the society around has been healed. Things are as they should be. And it's the same with the. The fairy world is healed. The human, mortal world is healed. And the one thing that does not happen in this, as far as I can tell, at least not in the stagings I've seen, is we don't get to see the play of Pyramus and Thisbe.
- [104:07]
Pat Wright
Oh, well, then you need to watch the Glyndebourne version. It does have that. It's not part of the mask. It's spoken dialogue. So you can put anything in between the music.
- [104:18]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So in the play itself, in Amidst the Night's Dream, there's the play within a play, and that's how that ends. And Most of Act 5 of the Shakespeare play is actually Pyramus and Thisbe. We spend a lot of time with this play, and that ends the whole nuptial celebration. And the very, very end of the play, we see everybody is going to the bridal bed. They're going to be together. It's a fade to black. The fairies have blessed the marriages, and Puck is left alone on the stage to give a very famous epilogue. If we shadows have offended is how it starts. And he gives this beautiful epilogue that basically says, we've been putting on this story for you, but if you didn't like any of it, just pretend that it was a dream and then it'll all be fine. And that's how it ends.
- [105:05]
Pat Wright
Oh, that's wonderful. It's so funny when you said that Puck will say, if we have offended it. It's an echo of what some of the rustics were saying as they're preparing their play that they don't want the ladies to be offended or afraid with the lion and anything that might be dangerous in that very tragic comic presentation that they have.
- [105:30]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. And Puck kind of, in a way, is the character that most. There's often a character like this in a lot of Shakespeare plays who, in a way, is able to step outside of the narrative a little bit and talk directly to the audience. So he is the character who is more conscious, more able to break the fourth wall. And he says, if we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here. So he's saying to the Shakespeare's audience, he says, if you didn't like my play, don't worry about it. You just had a dream, you wasted a few hours. It's not a big deal. And that was very common in the time period to say, because it was very much like this was put on for the nobles. And if they didn't like it, then you're out of luck. Maybe you don't get to make more plays. And so you see this in a lot of Shakespeare plays where they say, please forgive me if you didn't like it. If you did like it, please clap. But of course, it's said in some much more beautiful language than that.
- [106:27]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes. It sounds like what Samuel Pepys should have paid attention to before he simply dismissed it as insipid.
- [106:36]
Kathleen Vanderwil
I mean, it is insipid a little bit, but that's okay. It's a very silly, sweet story. And I think on A Midsummer Night it could be fun to have that kind of a story. And I think the masks only make that more so the case as we end with, really, a hymn to love and to marriage.
- [106:58]
Pat Wright
Yeah. In fact, there's a hymn that Juno sings where she will appear on the stage, perhaps introduced by Oberon. Perhaps she simply appears. But she appears grandly, another goddess from the Greek pantheon.
- [107:16]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And she is the goddess of marriage. She's the goddess of married life, I would say. And she is married to Zeus. She is. Hera in Greek would be the version of her. But, yeah, she's sort of represented as the ultimate wife in mythology.
- [107:32]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes. And none of the negative associations that you sometimes hear in the myths about her here it is just her celebrating the coming together of the couples who belong together. And her song will end with her single saying. And since the errors of this night are past, may he be ever constant and she forever chaste, sweet, and in her song Juno will say that these lovers, may you be forever free from that tormenting devil jealousy, from all that anxious care and strife that attends a married life but to one another be true. There's more, but that's. That's the heart of it for her. And strong.
- [109:22]
Oberon
Rise happy Rise happy Rise happy, happy, happy, happy, happy love.
- [109:34]
Pat Wright
That was Juno, the goddess of marriage, encouraging these coupled up lovers onto a happy married life. But very interestingly, one of these songs that was added in, when Purcell revised his work just a little bit between 1692 and 1693, he added this piece, the Plaint. Oh, it'll bring tears to your eyes if you really let yourself go into the words and into the emotions of the singer delivering this. This is a very celebratory act. We've got everyone coupled together, they're going to get married, live happily ever after, as they say. But this is inserted as a little bit of a reality check that. That doesn't happen for everyone.
- [110:23]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. This feels like a strange addition here. I mean, it makes sense as an addition overall that there is always another side to love. There is the possibility of loss. There's the possibility that your lover will leave you. And this plaint is this nymph who's singing for her lost lover. But it is incongruous to me in the sense that we are at a wedding and it feels very. It is. It's like the little. The bit of sorrow in the cup of joy.
- [111:00]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [111:01]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And is right there sort of in the middle of. We've just had Juno, goddess of marriage, talking about, here's my hope for you, for your marriage. And then we have this nymph sort of reminding you that maybe things don't. Don't always work out. It's definitely a note that I think Shakespeare would not have added to his own play at this point.
- [111:19]
Pat Wright
Right.
- [111:19]
Kathleen Vanderwil
But it is. Yeah, it's very moving.
- [111:23]
Pat Wright
It is.
- [112:12]
Oberon
Let me leap me weep O let be forever Weep forever.
- [112:40]
Pat Wright
Yes, the. The plaint definitely brings us down, but we don't stay down. This isn't the ending of our show. We have, honestly, a very curious piece that follows as the celebrations continue. During this period of the late 17th century, chinoiserie things from China were considered exotic and wonderful. And we get this huge shot of out of nowhere, of Chinoiserie. We have people from China, we have sets from China. I mean, it's just another opportunity, it seems to me, for elaborate stage decoration. And a lot of modern performances dispense with the Chinese part of it entirely because it does seem so incongruous. And they may have some other beautiful sort of thing. And China doesn't mean now what it meant then to people in England, but that's part of this mask, this entertainment, as we are celebrating the marriages.
- [113:39]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. And it reminds me a little bit of one thing I haven't really mentioned when I've been talking about this changeling boy, is he is meant to be a changeling Indian boy too. Like he's meant to be from India and his mother from India. And there's this idea that the fairies represent exoticism to. And to this particular audience at this time period, China, India would all have read as exotic as the exotic Otherworld, which obviously got very stereotyped during this time period. So it makes sense a lot to see that other productions more modern would remove this. It could be staged, I'm sure, very offensively, with some very offensive stereotypes, but very common, and wouldn't have seemed out of. Of step with Shakespeare's own production as well.
- [114:23]
Pat Wright
Right, and we're going to end with a song from Hymen. Tell us about Hymen.
- [114:30]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. So one thing that this. This whole set of music in this last act has been following the structure of a Greek marriage in a way. So another word for the first song that we heard is the epithalamium, which is what you would play as the bride is at the threshold of the married house. And the Hymen song is what would be sung once you've crossed over that threshold. So you would sing that as the ceremony is concluding. And the idea is that Hymen literally means to join, or a joiner to sew together is where we get that. And it's both a meaning of marriage, like literal. You're combining these two people into one legal and emotional entity. But also, you know, as the name suggests, there's a sexual context as well. It's the union of the married lovers as well. So it's what would be sung as that, you know, was happening. So it's quite beautiful. And it's beautiful because it's a connection back to the Athenian aspect. So we've got this whole Athens thing going on. We've got Shakespearean times referencing back to classical antiquity and Athens and Greece. And we get Purcell bringing that back in at the end by following this ancient Greek procession of the bride to her groom's bed.
- [115:54]
Pat Wright
Yeah. Ending with a beautiful song between two of the women who are on stage and the character Hymen proclaiming their happiness, their love, their successful marriages. So even though we were brought down a little bit a while back with the plaintiff. We end joyously very much appropriate to this happy ending story. So we're going to listen to a little bit of that. But right now I'd like to say thank you, Kathleen, for joining me on Opera for Everyone. As always, I appreciate all of your help in discussing opera, Shakespeare story, all of it.
- [116:30]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Happy to. Yeah, this was a really unique one for me. Thank you so much for including me and I hope to do more Shakespeare based operas with you in the future.
- [116:38]
Pat Wright
Yes, you can't predict the future, but I see that that's going to.
- [117:29]
Oberon
Ra.
- [117:56]
Pat Wright
Thanks for listening to another episode of Opera for Everyone. I've been your host today, Pat Wright.
- [118:02]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Joined by Kathleen Vandewill.
- [118:03]
Pat Wright
If you've enjoyed our show and would like to hear more, please subscribe to the Opera for Everyone podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Opera can be challenging, but everyone loves a good story and a story set to music is even better.
- [118:18]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Our mission is to make opera a understandable, accessible and enjoyable because we believe.
- [118:24]
Pat Wright
Opera is for everyone.