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- [00:23]
Pat Wright
Welcome to another edition of Opera For Everyone. I am your host, Pat Wright, and I'm here today with Kathleen Vanderwyl. Hey, Kathleen.
- [00:30]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Hey, Pat. Lovely to see you again.
- [00:33]
Pat Wright
Likewise, Kathleen. I'm going to just jump right in and say, please would you introduce the opera that we're going to discuss today?
- [00:40]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Of course. We are doing Benjamin Britton's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is a source material that we have touched on before, actually.
- [00:51]
Pat Wright
Yes. To be specific, episode 117. We talked about Henry Purcell's the Faerie Queen, which is also based on the Shakespeare play. This one is similar and also very different from the Purcell.
- [01:08]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, well, a couple hundred years different, I would say. The Faerie Queen is from the 17th century and this is from the 20th century, proving that Shakespeare's source material retains its importance and its relevance in English as well, and keeps a lot of fidelity to Shakespeare's language is a little more modern. So, yeah, I'm excited to talk about it.
- [01:30]
Pat Wright
So A Midsummer Night's Dream by Benjamin Britten, who also worked with his partner Peter Pears to prepare the libretto from the Shakespeare play. So there's not a separate librettist. Peter Pere, by the way, was his longtime life companion as well as professional companion. He's a tenor who. Who plays the lead tenor roles in most of Britain's compositions, although in this he plays a tenor, but not the lead role as a tenor. This premiered in 1960, so deep into the 20th century, and it's fascinating. I didn't know this when I picked these two, because I just wanted to pick two that were based on the same source material. I didn't realize that Britten himself harked back to Henry Purcell. He said he wanted to restore the musical setting of the English language, a brilliance, freedom and vitality that have been curiously rare since the death of Purcell. And there are loads of commentators on Britten's work who very much hark back to Henry Purcell, as here, finally is a British composer who is composing in the English idiom as well, and of high stature, just as Purcell was. So it's very. It's a very clear link between these two composers as well as, in the case of these two operas, our source material.
- [02:56]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
I have to say this is the first opera that I have seen that is in English, and it took some getting used to. I think we're so used to hearing opera and associating it as being either in often Italian, maybe French, sometimes German, but English. Obviously there are English operas out there, but I think it was a novel experience for me and took some Time I kept looking up at the subtitles, even though I didn't need to.
- [03:23]
Pat Wright
Well, that's true and not true with some of it. I feel like some of the. Particularly the soprano singing. It's so difficult to pick it up with your ear because listening to it, just if I'm listening to it on a CD or streaming. But you had the good fortune to see this live and in person in a theater.
- [03:39]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
I did, yes. I saw Atlanta Operas production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and that was my first opera in Atlanta and my first English opera. So very fitting that it's from one of my favorite pieces of source material. I'm a big Shakespeare fan. If you've listened to our previous episodes, I have been told that I mentioned Shakespeare probably on every one of these episodes.
- [04:01]
Pat Wright
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of Romeo and Juliet reference that you make, but that's fine. We're going to get to Romeo and Juliet as well. Of course. Of course we will, but. But this opera doesn't directly mirror. It's pretty close, but it doesn't directly mirror the Shakespeare. Because Britain and Paris jump in with their libretto right in the beginning of Act 2, skipping over entirely Act 1. So I honestly believe with both of these operas, it's not essential, but helpful to be familiar with the Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream, because then you're not wondering who these people are and what they're doing. Honestly.
- [04:39]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
It's true. I found this in the Faerie Queen and in this. Very much so. And in some other productions of the play, there is a tendency to center the characters, the fairy characters, in this case the Fairy Queen, Titania and Oberon, the Fairy king. This opera opens with them and really follows them as the protagonists and occasional antagonists of the story.
- [05:08]
Pat Wright
Or with each other.
- [05:09]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, Really a bit morally gray. But in Shakespeare's play, I would say one of the main differences is that it doesn't necessarily center them as the main characters. A Midsummer Night's Dream is very clearly an ensemble piece for Shakespeare. Every character is given fairly equal time. And the roles of the fairy characters are quite inflated in this opera, with good reason. They are interesting, they are fantastical, they wear incredible costumes, just as you'd want.
- [05:42]
Pat Wright
Your fantasy world to have with fairies and all the little.
- [05:45]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And I think there's a bit of a hurry up and get to the fairy world about it. Whereas Shakespeare wants us to understand the ground rules and the sort of, what are the mortals doing? What are the highborn mortals doing? What are the lowborn mortals doing? In order to make the. The trip into the fairy world more significant. So we see these characters, these mortal characters go into the fairy world from the normal mortal world. And that trip and that difference of place is important to understand what's happening to them and how they change as characters. So I do think that cutting that part out, while I totally understand why you do lose a little bit of context and you lose sort of the establishing of who are these characters before we see them go into the woods.
- [06:33]
Pat Wright
Yeah, it's really interesting when the opera opens and maybe we can play just a little bit of this very opening music. When the opera opens, the orchestra is just guiding us gently, gently until we realize we're in a very odd place. And we have the little fairies singing. By the way, it's a boys choir that does the singing of the fairies that introduce the setting. And they're leading us in and they're telling us who they are and who these people we're about to see are. Here we are. We're in this wood. It's night, and it's unfamiliar, and it's very strange.
- [08:15]
Puck
Man. How now, spirits?
- [09:25]
Pat Wright
How now, spirits? That was Puck, and he wasn't singing.
- [09:31]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, Puck doesn't sing throughout the opera. It's not necessarily that he's a narrator exactly, but I think because. Because he's not singing, he sort of functions that. Or he. She sort of functions that way. Puck is sort of a sort of ambiguously gendered character. I would say Puck is probably one of the more famous characters if you're a Shakespeare person. Puck is this sort of spirit of the woods, sidekick to the fairy king, trickster character. Very similar, and I think inspired by characters like maybe Loki from Norse mythology or Mercury from. From Greek and Roman mythology. He does the bidding of Oberon, but he also functions as a bit of a bookend to the play. He is the character that's going to give the epilogue at the end. He is the one that fills in information for us and also provides some.
- [10:21]
Pat Wright
Comic relief throughout and in experiencing the opera. Because he is speaking. He is very clear. You can always hear and understand the words if you're an English speaker. It's. It's interesting because it really distinguishes him. Plus the fact that he. He is typically meant to be cast as an acrobat, a tumbler, as well as just a spoken role.
- [10:43]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And I'll say that the. The version that I saw, one of my favorite choices the director made was actually to double the character of Puck. There were two actors that were exactly the same height and dressed exactly the same, both women. And one was Puck and spoke Puck's lines. And the other was Puck's shadow. And was always either physically had, like, hands on shoulders or holding hands with Puck, the sing or the speaking part. But also was able to do things like fly around the stage. So there were two Pucks to make it more clear that he saw she had sort of magical abilities of speed. And was able to kind of be everywhere at once. And they did some cool acrobatic things with that, too. Where sometimes the second Puck was literally looked like Puck's shadow. So that was kind of a cool choice by the director.
- [11:36]
Pat Wright
Yeah, it's definitely the feeling of who Puck is. It's so interesting. I mean, Shakespeare gets reinterpreted all the time by different directors. And this opera is just a piece of that. Enhancing it with all this music and another take on this old story. And those other voices we heard in the piece that we just listened to, that's the boys choir. Those are the fairies. They're very distinctive sounds. This is one of these operas I think you could simply listen to without seeing and still get tremendous enjoyment from it. Being able to picture what's going on. Because the sound world is different for the different groups of characters. And even within the fairy world, Puck is speaking. Oberon, we're going to meet in just a moment. The fairies are these young voices, these high, sweet voices. But Puck is going to let us know that Oberon is on the way. And when Oberon is on the scene, things sound different.
- [12:54]
Puck
Therefore, the winds.
- [12:56]
Oberon
The winds are so different from the sea.
- [13:00]
Puck
Contagious.
- [13:16]
Pat Wright
Oberon has entered. Titania, also, the fairy queen has entered. And the sounds. The sounds. That instrument, that was a celesta. Are you familiar with a celesta?
- [13:30]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
I am not.
- [13:31]
Pat Wright
It's very unique. It's very evocative of something being a little, to my ears, like floaty or otherworldly. A celesta is an upright bell piano that was developed in the late 19th century. In fact, not too many years after it was developed. Its most famous use, I would say, was made by Tchaikovsky in the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. If you can pull that to your mind's ear, that special sound of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, that's the celesta.
- [14:04]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Wow. I can hear that exactly in my mind now. And I think I always thought that was, I don't know, a xylophone maybe, but that makes more sense.
- [14:14]
Pat Wright
Well, it's possible that different orchestras play it as they can with the instruments. Available to them. But that's how Tchaikovsky scored it. And Britten made specific use of this instrument to evoke Oberon in particular. And there's something else that's special about Oberon as he sings.
- [14:32]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, Oberon is a countertenor. And I was aware of the. The existence of countertenors, but I have never heard a countertenor. Definitely not in person. And I will admit to you, just you. No one else is listening?
- [14:47]
Pat Wright
No, no one's listening.
- [14:48]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
That. I wondered for, I would say, most of the first half, if Oberon was a trousers role. And then at intermission, I looked at my. My program and realized, of course, that that wasn't the case. Because it. It sounds almost like an alto.
- [15:04]
Pat Wright
Well, yes. I mean, that's the range of the voice. This is an opera that premieres in 1960, so Britten can write for whatever voice type he wants. But he specifically chose to make this a counter tenor role again, to make Oberon sound a little otherworldly, a little different. He's not like the rest of them. There's a fascinating history to the counter tenor voice in that. A lot of folks these days think of the countertenor like, oh, that's how we get around the need for singers for these previously castrati roles from the Baroque period. And those certainly were very common. The castrati were these singers who had been emasculated as boys, so their voice never changes, but they grow into adult males. They're very powerful. They were the superstars for a long time before the 19th century, they were superstars. People just loved them. They were. There's a whole history of. Of the castrati. But that became illegal, thank goodness, and you needed to find a way to have these roles sung. And sometimes, and they still are, sometimes they're sung by women, mezzo sopranos, trousers roles. For instance. When you see one of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice productions, chances are you'll see a woman singing the Orpheus role. If an opera company is able to find one that they're content with, it can also be sung by a countertenor. But it was originally for a castrato, that role. There's the history of the countertenor there. But in modern usage, a countertenor is a composer's choice. Like, I want a man to sing this role, but I want him to be different. Like in Philip Blas's Akhenaten, the title character is sung by a counter tenor. The history of the countertenor in the 20th century is interesting. Because it's really not until this gentleman, Alfred Deller, that the counter tenor really becomes. He's a superstar, recognized voice type, and he's able to use his voice for a lot of these old baroque pieces. But also this role of Oberon. Benjamin Britten specifically wrote for Alfred Deller, and he premiered the role.
- [17:17]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Well, yeah, I think it's an inspired choice because not only is it indicating that Oberon is somehow different, set apart, there's this sort of oddity, otherworldliness. But when paired with the children's voices from earlier, there's a sense of almost immaturity associated with both his character and the rest of the fairies. And Titania is maybe a little bit different. We can talk about her vocals in a minute. She's much more of a sort of Queen of the Night type of character, is kind of how I saw her being sung, more of a traditional soprano. But he comes off as childlike sometimes, and his character is very childlike in his emotions. And I think there's this concept of using the sounds to mirror that, that the fairies are not literal children, although they're sung by children, but they are childlike. They're childlike in their morality. They're childlike in their actions and their vengeances, their loves, their feelings. The world of the forest is the world of immaturity and tricks and lack.
- [18:25]
Pat Wright
Of impulse control, very much so.
- [18:28]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And I think that the countertenor really reinforces that, because the sound is. It is. It's very high and childlike and odd.
- [18:37]
Pat Wright
Yeah. I hadn't thought about the pairing with the children that way, but that's a great observation. It's also interesting to hear a countertenor's voice paired with an adult female voice. It makes an interesting blend together, these two sounds. And Titania is meant to be a coloratura soprano, so someone who can sing with great decoration and fluidity. So, yeah, it's fascinating. But just the countertenor as a voice type, happily, is something that's been developing as the 20th century and into the 21st century goes along. There are more and more men training to be countertenors. And so it's wonderful to see these countertenors more and more in these roles that were written for men, but so frequently sung by women. And it's just. It's a joy to see live performance in any event. So I'm glad you got to see your first countertenor.
- [19:33]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
I am glad I did, too. I've mentioned it on previous episodes. There is an interesting symmetry here with gender, because, of course, Shakespeare's plays would have all been performed with only men.
- [19:44]
Pat Wright
Right.
- [19:45]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
I often think of that when I see a trousers role, for instance, that your brain has to do a little bit of extra adjusting. I liked that it was a male singer performing this very masculine and yet very sort of odd role because it just felt thematically correct. I think if it had been a trousers role, it would have. Maybe it would have been more of a jarring thing for me to see.
- [20:11]
Pat Wright
And yet you thought it might have been for a certain amount of time.
- [20:13]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Well, yes, and I found it a little jarring. But then again, of course, if it were Shakespeare's time, I wouldn't have thought twice about someone of that gender playing the opposite gender. It's all in what we're used to.
- [20:24]
Pat Wright
I mean, opera just. Opera just does that.
- [20:27]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
It's true.
- [20:28]
Pat Wright
It does it all the time. Okay, so you mentioned the childlike emotions and the childlike behavior of Oberon. And right away, the first thing we see with Oberon and Titania is a spat, an argument, a disagreement.
- [20:42]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, yes. His first words to her are that it's bad that he sees her ill. Met by moonlight, he says. And he calls her proud Titania, and she calls him jealous Oberon.
- [20:54]
Pat Wright
Both true.
- [20:55]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Both true. And that in a nutshell, really, right there. That's their problem. There's a bit of a complicated backstory here. I will simplify it somewhat. They are having a marital spat. Basically, she has refused to give him one of her human servants, who he, for whatever reason, he wants this child. And she refuses to give the child up because she knew the child's mother who has died in childbirth. And she is trying to take care of this human child, this changeling human child in the fairy world. And she loves this child. She wants to raise it. He is jealous, I think, of her love for the child and wants the child to be his own servant. They each have their own retinues. And you'll see that although they are married, they have their own separate households, in a way, their own followers, their own people who are loyal to them. And he wants this boy to be part of his loyal followers instead of hers. It seems like a very flimsy excuse for the kind of nonsense that they will get up to in this fight. But I guess sometimes the biggest fights come from things that don't seem like they matter that much. So that is the fight right now. And you can see from the beginning things are out of joint. Things are somehow wrong. There's a marriage, there's a fight in that Marriage. And so we start in a place of discord, right?
- [22:20]
Pat Wright
We do. And they're going to tell us everything's out of joint. The seasons are wrong. The animals aren't acting the way they're supposed to, the fields aren't acting the way they're supposed to. And Oberon just says, well, it's within your power to change things. Like, never. Does it occur to him if he drops his claim on this young boy, that everything will be fine? He says, well, you can fix it if you want to.
- [23:14]
Puck
Majestic.
- [23:42]
Oberon
Do you amend it, then? It lies in you.
- [23:46]
Puck
I do.
- [23:47]
Pat Wright
Much.
- [23:47]
Oberon
Beg a little changeling boy to be my henchman.
- [23:52]
Pat Wright
Well, even though Oberon thinks it's in her power to change things, she's not budging. Not for thy fairy kingdom. And she makes a dramatic exit. Oberyn has a plan, though.
- [24:05]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, he's not gonna take that lying down. He decides that his way of getting back at her is he's gonna find a way to embarrass her and have control over her. So he, because he's the fairy king, he happens to know of a flower somewhere in the world, and he sends Puck to go get this flower. And if you take some of the pollen or the juice from this flower and you lay it on someone's eyelids while they're sleeping, when they wake up, the next thing they see, no matter what, if it's a wolf or a bear or a man or a monster, they will fall madly in love with this thing. And so he wants to do this to Titania. He wants to embarrass her and also control her feelings as a way of punishing her for refusing him.
- [24:53]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [24:54]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And very importantly, there is a line here that I think is important. She says at the beginning, after she says that it's ill met by moonlight. She says, I have forsworn his bed and company. So this is a fight that has not only. It's not only a marital spat. She has forsworn his bed. She will not be his wife anymore right now until they resolve this. And so his way of controlling her and getting back at her is to give her another lover that she does not choose herself. So it is. It is quite dark and quite controlling of him.
- [25:26]
Pat Wright
Yeah, it's very strange. It's very strange. Well, we're done with the fairies for the moment. The stage is empty and then is populated with another group. And these are the people we would have met in the first act of the Shakespeare version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. But here we meet them for the first time. And it's two of the Athenian highborn youth, Lysander and Hermia, who are in love with one another. But things are not going well for Lysander and Hermia. Here they are in the forest, and very quickly they're going to fill us in. Using Shakespeare's language, they're going to fill us in on the problem.
- [26:06]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, like I mentioned before, the original play is much more of an ensemble piece. And so you have these different groups that we check in on and who periodically cross paths with each other. One of those groups is these four lovers. So there's Lysander and Hermia, who are in love, who want to get married. There's no problem between them, except that her father wishes that she would marry someone else, a man named Demetrius, and he has refused permission to Lysander to marry her. And so they have run away into the woods to try and find a place beyond Athens where they can be together and get married. Lysander and Hermia are highborne. They represent this noble mortal world, just as Titania and Oberon represent the noble fairy world. And they are another pair of lovers, like the fairy king and queen, who are in some version of discord right now.
- [27:02]
Pat Wright
Yes, And Lysander here will tell us, and I bet you've heard this before, the course of true love never did run smooth, which is a reflection on their situation as well as the married couple we just saw.
- [27:15]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Very much so, yes. Everybody has their own barrier in a love story. Otherwise there'd be no reason to have have a story at all if everything was fine. And in this case, that is their barrier, is the edict of her father. We will soon meet two other Athenian youths, highborn youths. Helena, Hermia's best friend, and Demetrius, the man who's in love with Hermia. And both of them will follow them into the woods and we will meet them soon. So we'll have two pairs of lovers. Shakespeare loves to do two, even sometimes three pairs of the same character, basically, just to make sure we get the point. But for now, Hermea and Lysander have sort of been speaking of their terrible trials. And of course, Oberon and Puck have been listening.
- [28:00]
Pat Wright
Yes, well, one of the things that Lysander tells us here, and this is interesting, because it's the only language that is not Shakespeare's own that's inserted into this libretto. Pears in Britain worked very hard to trim down the Shakespearean play, because it takes longer to sing words than it takes to say them. They have to condense somewhat, but because of the elimination of Act 1. Lysander will tell us the sharp Athenian law compelling thee to marry Demetrius cannot pursue us where we plan to go. Well, the other part of this, it's not just that Demetrius loves Hermia, it's that Hermia's father loves Demetrius and insists that Hermia and Demetrius marry. And that sharp Athenian law says that the father's wishes are paramount, that she will be punished either with death or being removed from society in a nunnery if she does not follow her father's wishes. So that's the sharp Athenian law. That's the little backstory he is inserting right there. But the rest of this is Shakespeare's language. And you can watch this and think it's all there, but they get rid of about 50% of the lines from the Shakespeare play.
- [29:15]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah. Which I think they do skillfully. Obviously. I noticed that all of act one is missing.
- [29:23]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [29:23]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
It was not noticeable to me what else had been removed. There's. There's definitely some stuff in Act 5 that's removed as well. But there's a lot of fidelity here to the structure of the play.
- [29:35]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [29:36]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And you're so right to note that it does take so much longer to sing than to say. And if they had kept all of it, I'm sure it would have been just untenably long. I would say, to me, the experience of it being sung so word for word was actually very jarring because I actually think that fidelity to the exact language was almost too much fidelity to me, actually, though I think they could have either cut more. I'm Monday morning quarterbacking Benjamin Britain. I shouldn't do so, but.
- [30:05]
Pat Wright
No, probably not.
- [30:07]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
But I actually found the fidelity a little bit hard to get into the story because I think I'm so used to hearing it said. And there are certain things that you just can't do with a sung line that you can do with a spoken line, and especially. And I'll talk about this a little bit more when we get to some. Some other characters you've met yet. Humor. I have found that I have seen funny operas. I have, of course, seen many funny operas. But I think humor is just maybe harder to do when you're trying to do Shakespearean humor specifically and sing it. Because A Midsummer Night's Dream is riotously funny, and it should have the audience absolutely rolling in the aisles. And I did not see that from the audience when I saw it.
- [30:54]
Pat Wright
The aisles were clear.
- [30:56]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
The aisles were clear. I think everybody was trying to understand what was going on, maybe, and not Getting the humor as much. So we can talk about that a little bit later. But. But, yeah, I think doing Shakespearean humor specifically and trying to sing it in an opera was, at least in my experience of this production, maybe a little too much to ask of the audience.
- [31:13]
Pat Wright
Oh, that's very interesting. That's very interesting. I mean, there are moments in Puck's speech here, I think, where the humor can come through, but he's speaking, he's not singing. So I don't know. But I will say I don't have proof of this, but I believe Britain was very conscious of being an English composer, being an Englishman, taking this source material and trying to make a very English story into a very English opera. So I think there might be a sense of responsibility also. He and Peter Pears had decided that this was going to be the opera which marked the grand reopening of a concert hall for a festival the two of them had begun. And in the amount of time they had, they decided, oh, we'll take this work. It will make the libretto writing process go a little quicker to just amend the Shakespeare script. And that's what they did. So I don't entirely know. But, you know, the beauty of seeing opera and experiencing it now, even if it was written in the past, you can reconceive of it, you can have opinions. It will live on, and this will be played again in a hundred years, and people will respond to it differently. But that's part of the joy of opera, I think.
- [32:31]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, of course. Very much so.
- [32:34]
Pat Wright
Well, in this scene with Lysander and Hermia, it almost feels a little like a wedding scene, the way it is presented. After the backstory is given, there's this. I swear to thee. I swear to thee. I swear to thee. Were there, they're pledging their love to one another, pledging their lives to one another. And I'd like to just hear a little bit of that so we get a sense of the depth of the love between these two.
- [32:59]
Puck
If thou lovest me I swear to thee By Cupid's strongest bow I swear to thee by swear to thee I swear to thee I swear to thee I swear to you I swear.
- [34:23]
Pat Wright
It almost feels like Hermia and Lysander are married, but of course, they're not. And now Oberon will enter. Of course, you recognize that sound means Oberon is on the scene. And we have Demetrius and Helena, these other two highborn, noble youth. She loves him. He loves Hermia.
- [35:00]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes. And just one quick note on what Oberon was doing during our Little Oberon interlude we've referenced before, that his plan is to smear her eyelids with the juice. He does do that, but he lays a sort of curse upon her. He wants her to wake up when something horrible is near. And he's going to instruct Puck to find her something, something horrible to look upon when she wakes. Poor woman. But, yes, that quickly fades to. We see the other two lovers. And I will just make a note that Britain's scene with Lysander and Hermia that we spoke of a few minutes ago, that is actually lifted from Act 1 and is a way of introducing these characters. Even though he kind of cuts all of Act 1, he transposes that scene to the forest and then introduces us to Demetrius and Helena. When in reality in the play, we meet Demetrius and Helena first in the forest. They are the ones we see first running around in the woods. And that is because Helena, great friend that she is to Hermia, yes, has revealed the secret that Hermia is. The only person she told is Helena, that she was leaving. But Helena is so besotted, so completely in love with Demetrius. They were together before the action of the play. There is a couple lines to signify that they had a relationship and thought they would marry. But then Demetrius fell in love with Hermia and wasn't constant to her. And Helena feels like things are wrong, that something has happened that shouldn't have happened, that they should be together, that it should be the two and the two and not this mix two people in love with one woman situation. So she runs after Demetrius after telling him that Hermia and Lysander have gone into the woods. He follows them. And so you have a lovely scene where you've got Hermia and Lysander wandering around the woods and Demetrius trying to find them and Helena trying to find Demetrius. And everybody is out of joint and unhappy, right?
- [36:58]
Pat Wright
And here she's essentially begging, demetrius, please, please regard me as your dog. I will dote on you as a dog. It's very degrading, but it's very heartfelt on her part as well. It's kind of upsetting. And he's not kind at all. He's very dismissive.
- [37:18]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And I think it's important to have this scene, even as painful as it is, because so much of the action of romance within this play is brought about small spoiler alert, by this magical flower. You have characters who are professing their love for other characters under the influence, one might say. But this is not that there is no influence. It is a way of Showing you love makes you crazy. It makes you do crazy things. Degrading things to yourself. And Helena running around after Demetrius and begging him to beat her like his spaniel.
- [37:51]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [37:52]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Is a prime example that you don't need the love juice to make you do crazy things.
- [37:58]
Pat Wright
That is true. And all of this discord, all of this insanity is being watched by Oberon.
- [38:06]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes. He sees all.
- [38:08]
Pat Wright
I can do something about this.
- [38:10]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, yeah. He says, well, I've already checked off the first thing on my to do list for the day. Humiliate my wife. I've got this flower. Why not do some more? But instead of. What I would have expected if Puck had seen them alone is Puck would have said, let me cause more mischief. But Oberon actually says, let me fix this. Let me make this so that it's right. And if you know anything about the fairy world in mythology and fiction, it is a very untrustworthy, unstable place. And trusting a fairy to do something that you want them to do is never a good idea. It's often an example of you'll get what you ask for, but the cost will be horrible in some way. But this is actually a fairly selfless, almost noble gesture on Oberon's part. He says, look at this poor woman, Helena. She's so unhappy. Let's fix this. So he sends Puck and he says, you see, the Athenian put some of that juice on his eyes so that when he wakes up, he sees this woman, Helena, and falls in love with her. And what could possibly go wrong?
- [39:10]
Pat Wright
Well, that. And it does make you wonder. He probably wouldn't have sent Puck out to the ends of the earth to get this flower just for the sake of these mortals. But as long as you've got the flower, you might as well make use of it.
- [39:22]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Exactly.
- [39:24]
Pat Wright
Yeah. And he gives very clear instructions. You'll know him by his clothing, because he doesn't look like a fairy. He's dressed like one of the people in great garments. Athenian garments in the original. And they keep the original language here. Time for another group to enter. And another sound world. Let's meet the mortals of the common class.
- [39:55]
Bottom
It's all our company here. And my man, according to the script, first could be to quit. Say what? The play treats on Mary. A play is the most lamentable comedy and must do. A death of Pyramus and his bee Of Pyramus and peace. A very good piece of work, I assure you.
- [40:28]
Puck
And a merry.
- [40:30]
Bottom
Now, good Peter queens, call forth your actors by the sea Throne Master Spring.
- [40:37]
Puck
Yourselves.
- [40:41]
Bottom
Answer as I call You Nick Bottom, the weaver. Many important I am for empresy you Nick Bottom. A set down for Pyramus. What is Pyramus? A lover or a tyrant? A lover. Lover that kills himself most honour for love. My chief humor is for a tyrant. I could play a case fairy. Or apart to tear a cat ear to make for split the raging rocks and shivering sharks and break the laws of prison gates. And feet the scar shall shine fabar shall shine fabar and make an MA. And make anMOR. And feet the scar shall shine fafar and make tomorrow Foolish things.
- [41:37]
Puck
This was lofty.
- [41:44]
Bottom
Now name the rest of the players. Francis Lute is his. The pirate's maid. A tyrant's main grant his brute a llama is more controlling. Mellow's mender here. Peter Quince flute. You must take Thisbe on you. What is Thisbe? Thisbe a wandering knight. It is the lady the just.
- [42:18]
Oberon
Nay, faith, nay faith. Let on me be a woman.
- [42:25]
Bottom
Less of me be a woman. I have a bit coming, that's all. One you shall play in a mask. And you may speak as small as you will. And I may hide my face as.
- [42:40]
Puck
Meek as his father I speak.
- [42:58]
Pat Wright
Oh, no, you must make pitimus different sound world. The brass announce the entry of these rustics or these rude mechanicals, these common folk of the mortal world. And again, we don't see them in their world. And then entering the fairy world, we have them here, even though they're going to agree to meet at a certain oak tree, but they're setting up for this play that they're going to perform, even though they don't seem very professional.
- [43:32]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, once again, this is some act one stuff that we'll try and fill in for you guys. The Duke of Athens, Theseus and his fiance Hippolyta are going to get married. And for their wedding they have basically put out a general call that anybody who wants to audition to perform something after the wedding, but before everybody retires to bed, they will consider. And there's a big prize, a lot of money involved. And so it seems that this group of tradesmen, a tinker, a tailor, that kind of situation.
- [44:08]
Pat Wright
The weaver.
- [44:09]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, right. People who are not actors, not professional anythings, but they have looked at the prize money and they said, well, you know, I bet we could pull something together.
- [44:17]
Pat Wright
How hard could it be?
- [44:19]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And so they have these characters who are very funny and uncouth, and Shakespeare loves to have characters like this. And they're pretty much in every play that are sort of inappropriate, that make a lot of puns that are comic relief generally, but also are able to often provide a different way of looking at the other characters because they're a nice contrast. And they also often are more honest than the other characters who. The more elevated a character is in Shakespeare, the more likely they are to lie, and the more down to earth, the less likely. And so you have these characters that tell some hard truths often. And the most significant of these characters in this play is Bottom, the weaver that literally named Bottom. He wanted an idea of what kind of character he was meant to be. He is the butt of the jokes, and he is the most bombastic. He is the actor who wants to play every part. Who thinks he can play every part.
- [45:17]
Pat Wright
He wants to chew the scenery.
- [45:19]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, absolutely. He wants to be the lover, he wants to be the woman. He wants to be the fair maiden to be rescued. He wants to be the lion that chases the fair maiden, et cetera, et cetera.
- [45:29]
Pat Wright
He even wants to be the scenery.
- [45:31]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, right. He says, can I play the wall? At one point? So he is. He's the. It's funny because everybody knows a guy like this, right, in theater class in high school, who wanted to be every character. It's very recognizable type, even in the 16th century. So bottom is a fool, and thus will fall victim to Oberon's edict to Puck to find a foolish creature for Titania to fall in love with.
- [46:02]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes. And as they're introducing this play, I just love that this is Shakespeare, but I just love that he. Quince. Peter Quince, who's the director, essentially. He says this is a lamentable comedy about the most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe. But it's emphasis on comedy, honestly. There's this tragic in writing, but it's comic. It is completely comic, yes.
- [46:29]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
But it is also taken 100% seriously by the actors themselves. They are so funny for us to watch, but they are also so serious about what they're doing, which makes it even better.
- [46:44]
Pat Wright
And it is among these rustics, these rude mechanicals, that we find flute. And that's the tenor, the character that Peter Pears, Britain's partner, played in this not a leading role, as Peter Pears did play in most of Britain's works. But I think he was busy with a lot of other elements in this show, honestly, getting ready for this grand reopening of the Festival Hall. Just a side note about this festival. This is the Aldborough Festival. It's a seaside town where Britain had purchased a home. And he quite liked the area and at one point, when Peter Perez had been on tour, he comes back and says to Benjamin Britten, why don't we start our own festival? And it's a festival that they start in 1948 and it is still a going concern. There's a period of time in the spring, early summer, when all kinds of interesting works are put on. They are musical productions, there are films, there are discussions about books, lectures, all kinds of things that happen. It's a very vibrant culture, cultural concern. And in fact, later on, in 1972, the Britain pairs School was established to help train young artists as well. So Aldbr festival started in 1948, still carrying on. I. I looked at the website recently. It looks fascinating and look, I've never been, but it looks amazing. So to me it feels like there's a sense of responsibility with Britain and pairs to the English cultural life, specifically the musical cultural life, but establishing a venue. Britten himself premiered a lot of his works once this festival was established. And it's not only this festival where you get a sense of responsibility of music. You also get it in Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. That's a composition that Britten wrote, literally that to introduce the orchestra to young people. And by the way, it's Variations on a Theme, a piece of music written by Henry Purcell.
- [48:46]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Oh, wow.
- [48:46]
Pat Wright
So he takes a Purcell piece and he talks about the different sections of the orchestra. There's narration that's written for it. I even saw there was a recording where Sean Connery was the narrator. Can you imagine?
- [49:01]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
All of that is so English.
- [49:04]
Pat Wright
It's wonderful, though. It's really wonderful. But a sense of not just writing the music that puts him on the map and is going to establish his own position in the musical world. But there' sense of bringing along others with this Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. He writes operas for children too. The Little Sweep is part of something called let's make an Opera. And they literally, it's sort of this play within the play or opera within the opera. You have a group of amateurs talking about how to start an opera. Ultimately, it's based on William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. But the idea is that you can mix professionals with amateurs, you can bring people along in that particular work, the Little Sweep, they rehearse the audience and then after the interval, the audience is part of this chorus of voices that sings. It's an amazing, amazing thing. The Noia or Noah's Flood, based on an old medieval mystery play, a real tradition in English performance. And he is often cited. When you read sections about the medieval mystery play, Britain's name will pop up because it'll say, he's a modern interpreter and popularizer. Bringing back some of this. It's amazing.
- [50:25]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
That really ties together a lot of the people we've been talking about, too. I mean, Shakespeare and Britain obviously live very different time periods, but both are so incredibly concerned about what it means to be English, to be British, to be a person of that heritage. Britain's time, obviously, in the 60s. This is post World War II. There's a lot of idea of sort of, what does England look like after Empire, with the dissolution of the empire, post World War II, sort of a slow dissolution. And also, what does Europe look like after World War II? So it makes sense to have a lot of, well, what does it mean to be English now? And Shakespeare, too, was living in a time where, what does it mean to be English if suddenly we're a Protestant country and not a Catholic country? What does it mean to be English during a time of great upheaval? And a lot of his plays are very much concerned with the myths and the sources from either ancient Greece all the way through medieval England. What are the foundational stories that are distinctly English, so they have a lot in common.
- [51:27]
Pat Wright
Well, also, fascinatingly, because we know Queen Elizabeth I was an important person during Shakespeare's lifetime. Queen Elizabeth II, her coronation, 1953. Benjamin Britain was tapped to write a piece in celebration of the coronation. Gloriana, he writes, and it's about Queen Elizabeth I, but it's written for the occasion of the coronation, so, I mean, that's beautiful.
- [51:54]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And Queen Elizabeth I, often referred to as the fairy queen. There's a whole play or a whole long poem by Edmund Spenser that uses the idea of a faerie queen to talk about the glories of Elizabeth I. There are, yes, a million connections here. A real continuum of imagery and story.
- [52:12]
Pat Wright
Yeah, yeah. All right. I think we need to get back to our story. Meanwhile, with our young lovers, Lysander and Hermia. How are things going?
- [52:21]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Well, they have been wandering around. They're lost. Hermia and Lysander are so tired. And they lay down to sleep.
- [52:28]
Pat Wright
That's the middle of the night, after all. It is.
- [52:30]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And they've been. The idea is maybe they've been wandering around for quite some time. They're lost. The forest is not a regular forest, of course. It's an enchanted forest, so very easy to get lost in.
- [52:40]
Pat Wright
And in spite of. I swear to thee I swear to thee when they go to Sleep. Hermia's like, oh, no, we're not actually married. You go over there, you go over there. That's how this works.
- [52:50]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, a sort of a repeat of my favorite here, I'll mention it, Romeo and Juliet scene where Romeo's leaving a niece. Sort of like, well, I'm not really satisfied. She goes, what kind of satisfaction were you expecting to get tonight?
- [53:04]
Pat Wright
We haven't seen the priest yet.
- [53:05]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, exactly. It's a moment like that. And so she says, you sit over there and go to sleep and I'll be over here. And so that's important plot wise, because they're not sleeping together when Puck happens upon them. And so he thinks that they are the discordant lovers because they're not sleeping together. And so Puck says, I've been wandering around. He shows up on the seaside. I can't find this guy with the Athenian clothes. Where is he? And then he sees Lysander.
- [53:32]
Pat Wright
He goes, ta da.
- [53:33]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Oh my gosh, that must be him. So of course, he puts the love charm on Lysander's eyes, setting up what will soon happen, which is Helena and Demetrius find the two sleeping lovers.
- [53:48]
Pat Wright
Yep.
- [53:49]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And Helena especially sees Lysander. Demetrius, he's focused on Hermia. She sees Lysander and she thinks that he is dead because she sees him lying there.
- [54:01]
Pat Wright
Yes, but I see no blood, no wound.
- [54:04]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
She sees him lying there and she thinks, what could this be? And so she kind of shakes him awake, like, please be alive.
- [54:11]
Pat Wright
Yeah, yeah.
- [54:12]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And he wakes up, he sees her and is instantly in love with her.
- [54:16]
Pat Wright
That juice is powerful stuff.
- [54:18]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes. And Helena doesn't believe him. She knows that he is a faithful man and faithful to her friend. And so she thinks that he's making fun of her rather than believe that something is going on here. And she runs away. She's hurt. And Lysander runs after her and leaves Hermia alone. Demetrius has also run off and so Hermia wakes up and she is alone. She's been having this nightmare and she sees that Lysander is gone and she thinks the worst. Once again, everybody sort of thinks something terrible might be happening. The atmosphere, I guess. And so then she gets up and tries to find him. And so we once again have our poor four lovers all chasing after each other in the dark of the night, frantic and unhappy.
- [55:05]
Pat Wright
So, middle of the night, there's a lot going on in these fairy woods.
- [55:10]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, all the things happen at night.
- [55:13]
Pat Wright
In spite of our lovers having slept, woken up, running around the forest. I think I'd like to end this first half with this lovely lullaby that the fairies sing to get Titania to sleep. And then we'll see what happens to our characters next in the second half of our show.
- [56:46]
Puck
Our sleep then to your offices. Let me rest you with double tongue. Only hogs needle seen. Miserable blind words with a wrong comedy queen.
- [58:27]
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 guest co host Kathleen Vandewille.
- [58:42]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
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.
- [58:54]
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.
- [59:03]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Stay with us. The second half of today's show is coming right up.
- [59:27]
Puck
Foreign.
- [59:39]
Pat Wright
Welcome back to the second half of Opera for Everyone. I'm Pat Wright and I'm here today with Kathleen Vanderwille. Kathleen, thank you for joining me once again. Always happy to be here, Shakespeare or any opera. You're fabulous. Thank you. A quick shout out to Kathleen and her work elsewhere. Well, you do a lot of things, but I'm specifically speaking of Constructive Criticism, the blog that you write about popular culture. Not so popular culture, books, movies, television, or anything else that you can connect to those.
- [60:11]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, anything that's got a story attached, I'll write about it.
- [60:14]
Pat Wright
Yeah, yeah. I, I really do feel like it's wonderful and I think it has certain things in common with Opera for Everyone in that they're fun to listen to when they come out, but they're also great to reflect back on. Like if you're going to see an opera, you might listen to the Opera for Everyone that was recorded who knows how long ago because it gets you ready to go see that opera. But with Constructive Criticism, you could say, hey, I'm interested in romance novels, but not necessarily the classic ones. What, what was it that Kathleen said about those? And you can go find that. It's great.
- [60:46]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
I'm so glad. Yeah. That I'm glad They're infinitely useful.
- [60:50]
Pat Wright
Well, they are. They're good reference because I read them. But honestly, I don't take notes on them because I know I can always go back, find that.
- [60:56]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
No notes required.
- [60:58]
Pat Wright
Yeah, exactly. It's wonderful. Well, thank you for your work on that and thank you for your work here on Opera for Everyone. So everybody visit. Constructive Criticism. It's A Substack blog. Kathleen Vanderwil, you will be glad you did. Now, we're going to take a moment to thank the folks who were responsible for this lovely CD that we've been listening to. This was recorded in 1990 under the direction of Richard Hickox with the City of London Sinfonia and the Trinity Boys Choir Choir director, David Squibb. Those are the fairy voices that we're hearing.
- [61:32]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes. And Oberon sung by James Bowman. Titania by Lillian Watson. Puck by Dexter Fletcher.
- [61:39]
Pat Wright
Not singing, Speaking.
- [61:41]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Oh, yes, speaking.
- [61:44]
Pat Wright
Lysander is sung by John Graham Hall. Demetrius sung by Henry Hereford, Hermia Della Jones and Helena Jill Gomez.
- [61:53]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And our Rustics bottom is Donald Maxwell Quince. Roger Bryson flute is Adrian Thompson.
- [62:01]
Pat Wright
Thank you, one and all, for the beautiful, beautiful music that we've been listening to. Well, Kathleen, before we do our opera helmet quiz or jump back into our story, I want to just say a little bit more about Benjamin Britten, because if you're not familiar with him, there are so many interesting things to know about this great composer. I certainly had heard his name before listening to music on the radio, but I didn't realize how many interesting things he had done. We mentioned the Aldborough Festival, and that's. That's huge. Probably his most famous opera is not this one, Midsummer Night's Dream. His most famous opera, and one that really just rocketed him to international attention was Peter Grimes, which is very serious. Some moral ambiguity going on there. But it was just. It was the one that inspired everyone to say, yeah, this is the guy who's really going to make it for English music in the 20th century. And, and it was true, I mean, so true, in fact, that I mentioned his partner, life partner, professional partner, Peter Pears. I mean, they lived during a period of time when homosexuality was a crime in England. They were even investigated at one point, and fortunately, that went nowhere. And I don't know if you could call it an open secret, but they were left alone. They actually lived in the United States for a period of time, went back to England in the 40s. The stature of these two men was such that in 1976, when Britain died, Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen wrote a condolence letter to Peter Pears. It's just remarkable, honestly. Early in his career and life, he was living in London. Didn't always love London. He preferred to be out of the city, along the sea coast, and that. That shows in some of the works he chose to create. But when he was living in London, he loved to stop into the theaters where they were showing the newsreels because they would include Disney shorts. He loved Disney shorts. He refers to them in various writings and letters. Particularly fond of Disney's Silly Symphony. I just, I find that so charming.
- [64:08]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Very much.
- [64:10]
Pat Wright
And in keeping with that, we know he wrote not just these big operas and symphonies and concertos and things for adults, he also wrote a lot of things with children and amateurs in mind. It's. It's lovely. Early training included when he actually needed to make money to support himself. He always knew he was going to be a composer, by the way. But when he needed to make money and support himself in the mid-30s, 19, 35, 36, 37. During those three years, he wrote nearly 40 scores for film, theater and radio. He worked for what's known as the GPO film unit. And it's fascinating. It's. It's a documentary making unit of the British Postal Service. I did, I've just learned about this in researching Britain. He says it was great training, though, because he had to write precisely timed scores, because he would write the music and then he would have to count the seconds to make it all fit together with the film. And of course, these things were on deadline and it was serious training to make everything work, working with other people. So it's not like this picture of the artist off on his own, just creating. As inspiration hit, he was working on deadline to the needs of other people. Fascinating. Now, I know you're going to like this. One of the people he met in his work with this film unit in the mid-30s was W.H. auden.
- [65:31]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
I do love Auden.
- [65:32]
Pat Wright
I know you do. Interestingly, Auden went to the same boarding school that Britten went to about a decade earlier. He was a student there. And when he was a student, Britten was asked, well, okay, you want to be a composer, great. Not many people can really make that work. Young Benjamin, what's your backup plan? And he just thought, well, I'll be a concert pianist, I'll be an accompanist. Apparently Auden was asked the same question as a child. You want to be a poet? Well, good luck. What's your backup plan? He's like, no, no, no backup plan. I'm going to be a great poet. And that tells you a little something about the two personalities. They're not the same.
- [66:08]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, I can imagine that anecdote about Auden. If you want to get a great overview of Shakespeare, whether it's this or any Shakespeare play, one of my favorite things Auden ever did is he. Well, he announced in the New York Times for anyone who wanted to attend that he was going to do a lecture on every play by Shakespeare in chronological order.
- [66:28]
Pat Wright
Oh, glorious.
- [66:30]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And he did that for the, it's called the New School for Social Research in New York. He was in America at that time. And it is collected. There's a wonderful edition from Princeton that you can get. And they are just truly interesting psychological studies, especially of Shakespeare's plays, really looking at them from a 20th century perspective. But yes, so, so a lot of, I'm sure they had a lot of Shakespeare to talk about in common.
- [66:54]
Pat Wright
I think they had a lot to talk about because they recognized in each other that they were both these immensely talented artists in their given field. In fact, there's a grouping, a collective grouping of artists in the mid to late 30s, this period of time when these two first meet, that's this Auden generation or this Auden circle. So Auden clearly a dominant figure. And Auden is somebody who, by the way, was encouraging Britain to expand his. Horiz, don't be so middle class and don't be so concerned about the niceties. But Britain was. And Auden told him to basically let loose a little bit. Benjamin, you know, but they met doing these, these films together for the, the GPO film unit. Fascinating.
- [67:37]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
It is fascinating. Of course, Auden, too, was also sort of openly, as much as possible, gay at the time, too. So I'm sure also his ability to move in society as a gay man as sort of an open secret probably gave Britain the confidence to do so as well.
- [67:54]
Pat Wright
It took some time on Britain's part to feel comfortable in that position, but Auden was definitely part of the mix. I'll just mention two of the works that they worked on together for this GPO film unit. I don't know why I find this funny, but I do. One was called Coalface, about a Yorkshire mining community, came out in 1935. The prose commentary was written by Montague Slater, who turns out to have been later on the librettist for Peter Grimes. So I, I, whoever's doing the hiring for this film unit, they did a great job.
- [68:29]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Wow. That's incredible.
- [68:31]
Pat Wright
And probably the most famous film that came out of this whole unit was called Night Train. It was about, of all things, nighttime mail delivery from London into various Scottish cities that came out in 1936. And Auden wrote some poetry for that. And Britain, of course, wrote the score. It's, I mean, it's just remarkable.
- [68:52]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
It's remarkable how proud Britain is of its post system. They are really proud of how well organized their general post office is enough to hire Benjamin Britton to write an opera about it.
- [69:05]
Pat Wright
Well, not an opera he was scoring. First of all, he wasn't as well known when he was doing this. It was. It was paying the rent is what it was doing. It was letting him live in London. But in 1937, about the time that his work with this film unit is wrapping up, that's when he meets Peter Pears. They become great friends. In fact, they travel to America together. But it isn't until they. They first go to Canada and then to the United States. But it wasn't until they were in the United States that that this friendship became a partnership, became life partners. And they were. They were right together through it all, until the death of Britain when they were living in America. He writes his first opera. It's an operetta with a libretto by. Who else? W.H. auden. Paul Bunyan. Again, he's in. I love this. He's in America. So he writes about this larger than life. Literally larger than life. American character. Premiere was given at Columbia University, 1941. It's fascinating.
- [70:07]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah. He's clearly really interested in what are the foundational myths of a people. What are the folk traditions? What are the things that make you English? What are the things that make you American? And although we may not think about the myth of Paul Bunyan too much, maybe today, I definitely remember hearing about it when I was in school as a child.
- [70:22]
Pat Wright
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was trying to pull. Pull it back up into my memory when I came across this. What an interesting man he must have been. He feels a little more accessible than a lot of these people who are so many centuries behind us, but. Wow. Well, we're enjoying his A Midsummer Night's Dream, and we've put it off long enough. We're going to do an opera helmet quiz. Just bring us up to speed on the plot so that we can move forward because there's more to happen.
- [70:46]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
There is. I will quickly bring us up to speed. So we have met Oberon, the king of the fairies. His lieutenant, his sidekick Puck, which is a spoken role. His queen, Titania, queen of the fairies. And they are having a marital spat. And Oberon decides he wants to punish her for not doing what he says and asks Puck to go find this flower that if you put the juice on her eyelids of the. The pollen of this flower, she'll wake up and she'll fall in love with some monster, whatever she sees next. While they're doing this, Oberon sees Two pairs of lovers have entered the forest who are mortals. They are noble mortals. There's Lysander and Hermia, who love each other but are running away from her father, who doesn't want her to marry him. And there's Demetrius and Helena. Demetrius wants to marry Hermia. Helena wants to marry Demetrius. Lysander wants to marry Hermia, too. And so we have a lot of lovers strife, a lot of discord. A lot of the course of true love is not running smooth for anyone.
- [71:48]
Pat Wright
Yes, they let us know that right up front.
- [71:50]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And so we have them. And then we have a third group who we met very recently, which is the common folk, the tradesmen of Athens. Mortals who are trying to rehearse a play that they want to put on in front of the Duke and Duchess of Athens at their wedding, because there's a hefty, hefty prize if they are chosen to perform. But they are not actors. They are just regular guys. And chief among them is a man named Bottom. Bottom the Weaver, who is very foolish and bombastic and is going to become an important part of our plot very soon. So when we left each of these people, we left the lovers sort of running after each other. Everybody's unhappy. Accidentally, Puck has made Lysander fall in love with Helena instead of making Demetrius fall in love with Helena.
- [72:37]
Pat Wright
Oops.
- [72:37]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
So they're running around after each other. Just have no idea what's going on. And the fairies have just sung Titania to sleep and left her somewhat vulnerable. And right at the end of Act 1, where we will begin our story. Oberon finds Titania and is about to smear this. This pollen on her eyelids in preparation for her waking up and falling in love with someone.
- [73:00]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes. There she is sleeping, and then we hear the soundscape change and this group of charming, bumbling men appear.
- [75:47]
Bottom
Are we all met?
- [75:49]
Puck
Pat.
- [75:50]
Bottom
Pat Patty, the marvelous Convenient place for a river for a. But chase thou bully button. There are things in this comedy that will never please. The Spiramus must throw a sword to kill himself which the ladies can find a lady upon the sea. Upon the sea. I believe we must eat the killing out.
- [76:23]
Oberon
When all the.
- [76:25]
Bottom
Not a whit, not a whit. I have a device to make awkward. Write me a prologue. Tell them that I, Perilous, am not Perilous, but Bottom the Weaver. This will put them on to fear.
- [76:47]
Pat Wright
Well, we know who's been on stage.
- [76:50]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, yes. Each of these groups of characters tend to have their own little motif.
- [76:55]
Pat Wright
Yeah, we know. It's really the use of different Instruments to indicate and how they're played. And I don't think we've mentioned this before because we're not talking about them right now. But when we get these young royal lovers, the highborne, it's gonna sound more strings and full orchestra. It's a different sound that's their own as well.
- [77:18]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
So we've been with the sort of ethereal, dreamlike lullaby world of Titania. And then we have the brass come in. And that's how we know that our amateur actors, I'll call them our amateur actors are coming in.
- [77:33]
Pat Wright
I imagine them in heavy boots entering.
- [77:35]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Very much so, yes.
- [77:36]
Pat Wright
Steel toes.
- [77:38]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes. They take up the stage, they make a lot of noise and there's many of them too. And they're all talking over each other and they're very excited because they found this place in the woods that no one will see them for their rehearsal. Because of course one of the things that they're afraid of is that someone will see their wonderful play and steal the idea from them. Oh, of course that couldn't happen. That'd be terrible.
- [77:59]
Pat Wright
Can't have that.
- [78:01]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
So they're hiding in the woods and they're performing. And in this case we get this wonderful scene. I've mentioned before that Bottom is bombastic and he wants to play every part. So he says, I will not only play the part of Pyramus, the hero, the lover, but they're a little bit afraid that their play is a little too blue or a little too. A little too scary for the ladies because it's got somebody, you know, a lover dying and a lion and stuff like that. So he says, well, why don't you write me a prologue and I'll talk through that and I'll tell them what's going on and I'll make sure all the ladies are fine. And then, well.
- [78:36]
Pat Wright
And he'll tell them I am Bottom. A little bit of self promotion going on too.
- [78:40]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, yes. And then he says, well, what if they're afraid of the lion? He says, don't worry, I can take care of that. I'll be a really non scary lion. Anyway. So he continues to be just this hilarious character. And Puck has been watching him, comes and sees him and says, this guy's perfect.
- [78:59]
Pat Wright
Found it.
- [78:59]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And he sort of leads Bottom away and follows him and puts an ass head onto Bottom. Basically he magically transforms him so that he has the head of a donkey.
- [79:12]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [79:12]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
So he is bottom the ass. Literally. You think Shakespeare is like this? I mean, he is this high flown, beautiful, intricate language. But he also loves to do things like name a character, Bottom the ass.
- [79:27]
Pat Wright
He just. He wants us to have a good time. He's an entertainer, after all.
- [79:33]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
So they, you know, the. The characters continue to rehearse, and Bottom comes back, and he's got this terrible monster's demeanor. And they all run away. They're scared. They say, what's happened to you? And he says, oh, you're just joking. He doesn't believe them because he doesn't believe it. He doesn't see, really himself that he has this on his head. And he has a series of just absolutely hilarious jokes where he says things like, oh, I know what you're doing. You're trying to make an ass of me.
- [80:03]
Pat Wright
Right, Right. Well, the funny thing is he's so confident of himself, and he's probably accustomed to people acting surprised at his own behavior, that this is not as odd as it might be to another person.
- [80:15]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Exactly. So he says, all right, fine. I don't need you guys. And he's kind of singing to himself as he walks through the woods. And of course, there is Titania lying asleep. And she wakes up, hears his voice, sees him, and she falls completely in love with him.
- [80:32]
Pat Wright
Yeah, that magic flower did its job.
- [80:34]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
She says, thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.
- [80:39]
Pat Wright
Which is true.
- [80:40]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Which is true. Which is true, of course. And he says, you know, oh, not so neither. I'm not either. That's true, too.
- [80:45]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [80:46]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And so she completely enamored, and she says, you have to stay with me. She's very imperious. And he sort of says, all right. He's very. He just kind of goes along with it. He sees a good thing. He sees a beautiful woman who wants to take him into her fairy bower. And he says, all right, fine. He's very open to the idea of this experience.
- [81:10]
Pat Wright
He is. And the piece that we're going to listen to a little bit of right now is her introducing him to her retinue and telling them they must take good care of this wonderful person who is now her love.
- [81:24]
Puck
Be kind and court in his rocks. And again.
- [82:28]
Pat Wright
This is opera for everyone, and we are listening to Benjamin Brittain's take on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. And Titania is in love, but not with the person she truly wants to be in love with.
- [82:43]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes. And we kind of leave them. We fade to black a little bit. They're entwined in each other's arms.
- [82:50]
Pat Wright
That's just as well.
- [82:51]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Just as well. Yes. And Puck then goes to tell Oberon, hey, Look, I did such a great job. And Oberon is delighted to find that plans have worked even better than he expected. But then, of course, Puck's triumph is short lived because Demetrius stumbles upon the scene. And Oberon and Puck watch as he pursues Hermia. And Puck looks and he goes, oh, I made a mistake. No. And. And Oberon is so mad because he's like, what are you doing? You put the juice on the wrong guy's eyes. And of course, Oberon's instructions were not very clear, I would say.
- [83:29]
Pat Wright
But don't you get the feeling that this is not the first time Puck has misinterpreted Oberon's instructions?
- [83:35]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, exactly. He's. He's a little bit of a. Yeah, like a comic sidekick character who's kind of always screwing up and sometimes I think maybe intentionally messing up.
- [83:46]
Pat Wright
Yeah, that's possible. It's likely.
- [83:48]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
So once again, Demetrius is exhausted. These poor lovers, they're so tired. They're wandering around, running after each other. Demetrius lays down, he says, I'm going to take a nap. I'm going to rest for a bit. Oberon says, all right. Puts the juice on Demetrius eyes.
- [84:04]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [84:05]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Then Helena and Lysander come in because they have been together in the sense that Lysander has been running after Helena because he loves her. Right. Helena has been running from him. So they come in. Demetrius sees Helena, wakes up and falls in love with her.
- [84:22]
Pat Wright
So now instead of the two men loving Hermia, the two men love Helena.
- [84:27]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
It's like you need a diagram throughout the play of who loves Hermia?
- [84:30]
Pat Wright
A little bit. A little bit. And I blame Shakespeare for naming both of these women Helena. Hermia with names that begin with age.
- [84:36]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, I do. I agree. So Hermia also appears, sees the four of them, and Lysander immediately rejects her and says, I don't love you anymore. Why would I want to be with you? I love Helen now.
- [84:49]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [84:50]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
So poor Hermia. The tables are turned. She's in the position Helena was in. And Helena still doesn't believe any of this and thinks everybody's in league against her. She thinks the three of them have concocted this elaborate joke on her, Right? And so they all start quarreling and they all just have this terrible fight. And you see the men fight each other a little bit. But Shakespeare knows where the good fight is. And it's not between those two men. Who cares about them? It's these two women, right?
- [85:18]
Pat Wright
Previously they were best friends. Now they are at each other's throats. Verbally, anyway.
- [85:24]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And there's been betrayals. And Hermia is depicted as she's short and Helena is tall. And it's usually played as Helena's kind of tall and blonde and she's short and dark haired. So there's all these hilarious little moments where Helena says, well, you're just a little thing. And she says, well, I'm not too little that I can't scratch your eyes out. And so we get this insanely hilarious slapstick scene of these two women fighting over these two men.
- [85:51]
Pat Wright
Yes. And at some point in here, this is when Puck delivers what I consider to be one of the most famous lines from this. Lord, what fools these mortals be. Yeah. Welcome to the humans.
- [86:03]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Welcome to being in love. It makes us all fools.
- [86:24]
Puck
Colony is here at hand, and the.
- [86:26]
Oberon
Youth is to find me.
- [86:31]
Pat Wright
Shall we?
- [86:31]
Oberon
There, fond pageant see. Lord, what fools these mortals be.
- [86:40]
Puck
Puppet whistle. By the tree goes the game. Now I perceive that she hath made compare, but we no strangers. She hath urged her it. She hath urged over it. And with her personage, her a tall personage, a height of soothing. He hath travailed with him. And are you broke? So high in his skin. Because I am so dwish and so low. You know I'm high.
- [87:41]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Speak.
- [87:42]
Puck
How low am I? I am not yet so low, but that my grace has returned to thee. You may perhaps think, because she is something lower than myself, that I can manage her when she's angry. She is king and sh. She was a victim, a victim, victim when she went to school. And though she be but victor, she loves nothing but lowered litter.
- [88:50]
Pat Wright
Discord continues. Hermia and Helena are at each other. How are going to set this right? Oh, my gosh.
- [88:58]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Well, I think it will only get set right by supernatural means.
- [89:02]
Pat Wright
Well, it's a comedy. It doesn't matter. Supernatural. Fine. Let's just sort this out.
- [89:08]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Sort this out. So, yeah, the women have fought. And then the men decide, well, we're going to fight too. We're going to have a real fight with swords. And so they don't have swords, so they try to find sticks to beat each other with. Because, of course, these are fools. And so Oberon is just so mad. And he says to Puck, he says, you have to lead them away from each other. Like, make sure they. They are running after each other. They don't find each other.
- [89:30]
Pat Wright
This is where the fog comes in, right?
- [89:32]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Punk puts fog everywhere. And he sort of mimics voices of the different characters and leads them away from each other. He leads them up and down, up and down. And then all four finally are so tired once again, so tired of all this running around.
- [89:47]
Pat Wright
It seems like more than one night.
- [89:49]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
This is the same night. But Shakespeare, just whenever he wants them to stop being a nuisance, he just makes them go to sleep, which is hilarious. So they all lay down on the ground, not realizing they're near each other, the four lovers, and they fall asleep. And then, as they're sleeping, we finally get the act that will fix everything, and that is that Lysander gets a cure. Put on his eyelashes.
- [90:16]
Pat Wright
Thank goodness we have an antidote.
- [90:17]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, of course. And Demetrius, his charm will stay on his eyes so that he continues to love Helena. And we end with the fairies singing them. They're already sort of asleep, but sort of singing. A blessing almost over these four lovers, that now everything is going to be as it should be. And there's this sort of famous line that says, jack shall have Jill, naught shall go ill. The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well. So this idea that people who are supposed to be together will be together. That's it. Everything's fine. And so that is the end of Act 2.
- [91:15]
Puck
Ra. Sam.
- [92:11]
Pat Wright
This is opera for everyone. And we have finished two of the three acts of Benjamin Britton's A Midsummer Night's Dream, based, of course, on the Shakespeare. Shakespeare's play, by the way, was five acts. But as part of our reduction of the script to become a libretto for an opera three, in the beginning of act three, Oberon tells Puck that he has been victorious. He has that little changeling boy that he has wanted that Titania refused to give him. I always find it a little awkward with this fight over this boy, this. This motherless child that Titania has decided to take in. But it's very much up to a director as how that gets interpreted what age this child is. It's never mentioned. I even saw one where they very much looked like a traditional family when they were all reunited. But I'm not sure that that's always the interpretation.
- [93:05]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, it feels to me sometimes almost like there was a. Like a prequel that we didn't see that was. That was this story. And it's possible. I don't know the scholarship on this, but it's possible that this is referencing a story that audiences may have been more familiar with at the time, because it does very much feel like, oh, did I miss something here? Who is this boy? Who is this woman? What is the situation? But in a symbolic sense, it is a bit of Titania And Oberon do not have children. It doesn't seem like that's. They're nature gods, basically, and the fairies and their retinue are more their servants. But it doesn't ever seem like they were blessed with children, per se. So in a way, I think this child represents that aspect of the. Maybe that failed aspect of their marriage that they don't have children. It's not a fertile union. But by restoring the boy to Oberon in some way, that fixes the. It is a little bit odd, but I think there's some metaphorical elements there for sure about the child.
- [94:06]
Pat Wright
Okay, well, Oberon's got what he wants.
- [94:09]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
He does.
- [94:09]
Pat Wright
And so he can undo this confusion in Titania's mind that has been brought on by this flower juice where she falls in love with this bombastic bottom with the head of a donkey.
- [94:21]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah. He's like, I almost feel sorry for her, you know, like, this is so ridiculous. And so he undoes the charm, just as he did for Lysander. Titania wakes up and says, oh, my gosh. You know, I just had this. This crazy dream. You'll never believe it. Yeah, I was in love with. With a donkey.
- [94:42]
Pat Wright
Oh, my goodness.
- [94:43]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And he says, yeah, he's right there next to you. Oh, my gosh. Once again, maybe a little underdeveloped in the plot here, but she seems to just take this in stride and says, well, okay, I forgive you and thank you for fixing this charm. And then they go off together and they seem to have solved their marital spat, which. Yes, okay.
- [95:05]
Pat Wright
All right. That's just another night in the woods.
- [95:07]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah. Yeah, right. It does kind of give the impression that maybe this is a thing they do to each other a lot. Like, they're always playing weird pranks on each other.
- [95:16]
Pat Wright
Anyway, now we have to get back to our four young royal lovers. They. They're ready to wake up.
- [95:24]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah. So they wake up naturally with the sun. The night of a midsummer night is over, and they are together, and they. They sort of call to each other and they see the person they love. And especially Demetrius and Helena have the ability to really say, I've been changed as a person. Especially Demetrius. He says, I thought that I was in love with Hermia. Now it's just sort of melted. Like, I don't feel that way at all. And I see Helena for who she really is again, and I love her.
- [95:55]
Pat Wright
And so, thank you, Oberon.
- [95:57]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, right. And that seems to be a lasting thing, that they are meant to be together, even if it is artificially constructed and they sing this beautiful quartet about having found the person that they love like a jewel. And there's a sort of wistful line that this person is my own, but also not my own, which is very true in Helena's case, especially. Are you sure that we are.
- [96:41]
Puck
It seems to me that we exceed I know and not and I have found Helen. Like us.
- [98:26]
Bottom
I know and love My.
- [98:30]
Puck
Heart lies in a loyalty I.
- [99:55]
Bottom
My home.
- [99:59]
Pat Wright
Everything has been set right for the four young lovers of noble blood. They're paired up as they ought to be, and they're off to return to their home, to Athens. But there's a few things that still have to be set right.
- [100:15]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
The main loose end is. Well, now what happens to Bottom?
- [100:18]
Pat Wright
Bottom.
- [100:19]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
So he's had the ass's head taken off of him.
- [100:22]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [100:22]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
He is himself again, and he just thinks he had a dream. And he's perfectly content to say, I just had this fabulous dream that I was in love with the fairy queen, and it was wonderful. Now I'm hungry and I want to go back and finish this play. He's a simple man.
- [100:38]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [100:38]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
So he. He says, where are all my friends? I need to go find them. And he goes and he is looking for them. They are looking for him as well, and they find each other. And he says, I've got this dream to tell you about, but first I want to tell you that the Duke has decided he wants to hear our play.
- [100:58]
Pat Wright
Hooray. That's what they've been wanting, but. But he wants Quince to write a ballad about his dream.
- [101:05]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah, of course.
- [101:06]
Pat Wright
And call it Bottom's Dream.
- [101:08]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, of course, because it was that.
- [101:11]
Pat Wright
Epic, because it's all about him.
- [101:12]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
There's this. I have one funny little bit from the play that I sort of wish had made it in here. When the Duke is trying to decide what he wants, see, you know, which of these acts, he lists them out and so does his bride. And they debate over sort of, what do we want to see? Do we want to see this? Do you want to see that? And they come across the title of this, the most Tragical comedy, right? And they say, what in the world is this? They're like, this is going to be a fun time, so they're going to mock it, that they decide to choose this play. And, of course, that makes the day, makes the month, makes the year of these people. And so they excitedly leave to prepare to put on this play for the Duke and Duchess Masters.
- [101:56]
Bottom
The Duke is coming from the temple. If a sport had gone forward, we had all been made men. O sweet bully, hot with ourselves. He lost sixpence, sixpence a day during his life. And the Duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing pyramids on the hand.
- [102:23]
Oberon
He would have deserved sixpence a day.
- [102:27]
Bottom
Sixpence in pillar's or not.
- [102:30]
Oberon
He could not have skipped it.
- [102:32]
Bottom
He could not have skipped it.
- [102:37]
Puck
Where are these, where are these hearts.
- [103:04]
Bottom
But has not walked? Let us hear, sweet pot. Not a word of me. Or what I will tell you is that the Duke hath died and our play is defined.
- [103:18]
Puck
Our play is preferred. Our way is preferred.
- [103:29]
Bottom
Together.
- [104:45]
Puck
It. It.
- [106:16]
Pat Wright
Well, we're finally out of the woods in this midsummer night's dream. The dream is over. The nighttime's over anyway. And we're at the court where we're getting ready for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. But also these other young lovers are going to be coupled up and married.
- [106:33]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes, they have gone to the Duke and he has granted them permission to marry. He has overridden the objections of Hermia's father and has said, you guys clearly love each other. I'm not gonna mess with that. Why don't you get married alongside me and my fiance? So we have a triple wedding. Shakespeare loves to end his comedies, his romances with a wedding, just so that there's no question about the happy ending of it all.
- [106:58]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes, yes.
- [106:59]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And so they have gotten married. They are now waiting. There's a space in between the wedding and going to bed at night. And they need to while away the hours. And that's why they're going to watch this play.
- [107:12]
Pat Wright
Any court worth the name needs good entertainment.
- [107:15]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Exactly. I'm not sure this is good entertainment, but it's entertainment. So then we get the play. And I will say this play within a play is people in the production I saw, this is where people were rolling in the aisles laughing was this play. And in some ways it was funny because people reacted way more enthusiastically to this particular section of the opera than to anything else. And people were just laughing and laughing and laughing because Bottom and his companions are so earnest and so bad. And they sing a play called Pyramus and Thisbe. So Pyramus is the lover and Thisbe is the woman he loves. And the story is very briefly, what's very Romeo and Juliet esque. It's these two lovers from rival families who are separated by a wall that separates the two properties. And they have been whispering and falling in love through. There's a hole in the wall and a Chink. And they kiss through the chink and they have decided they're going to run away together. They're going to meet in the graveyard. That always, you know, works out well at Ninus Tomb. And they. They meet. Thisbe goes first and she is surprised by a lion. Why is there a lion? I don't know.
- [108:31]
Pat Wright
Doesn't surprise me.
- [108:32]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah. Who doesn't hurt her, but scares her off and she drops her handkerchief or something and he pyramids comes in and sees that, sees that there's been a line and thinks oh my gosh, she's dead. And so then he kills himself. And then she comes and sees that he's killed himself and then she kills herself. And that is the very dark tragic play. That is the funniest part.
- [108:58]
Pat Wright
Isn't that terrible? We're laughing. But it's always just played for like when they try to like stick a sword through themself, they make it so obvious. I mean it's just. It is entirely played for laughs. Even though they're taking it seriously. That's why the audience that you were with and. And it happens when you see A Midsummer Night's Dream, the play, it's also hysterical.
- [109:19]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
It's hysterical. And they are given applause, plaudits. Even though it is bad, the fact that it is entertaining is enough for the nobles and they give the prize to Bottom and his friends for putting this play on.
- [109:38]
Pat Wright
Okay, I need to tell you a little bit about when this was first performed at this grand reopening of the Festival hall for the festival that written in Pears established. I mentioned Peter Pears, Britain's partner played the role of, well, Thisbe Flute. And when he is playing Thisbe in the play within the play, apparently he just hammed it up in a very coloraturo bel canto soprano type mode as he's singing Thisbeat and very much. We wouldn't know it now necessarily, some folks would. But very much imitating Joan Sutherland, the great soprano who played all these wonderful bel canto roles. So that just gave the audience even more enjoyment of the show to know that they were in on the joke even more.
- [110:33]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
That's hysterical. That is hysterical. I've seen this played in a couple different ways. I think my favorite version. I've mentioned this on our previous podcast about the fairy queen. There is a Kevin Kline Bottom movie. Yes, I call it the Kevin Kline Bottom. But it really has a cavalcade of very famous actors that you would probably recognize. And it's from a couple decades ago. So some very Young versions of actors that you may know today. And I definitely say, watch it. It's very funny and very sweet. But the play at the end, there's a moment that is specifically played as Sirius, and it is the flute character who gets so wrapped up in the play of Pyramus and Thisbe that he starts to truly weep over the death of Pyramus. And up until that point, the duke and the duchess were all laughing along. And his emotion moves them so much that that is why they applaud and give them the prize. And I love that little moment because there's a little bit of pathos in all of the love stories, even as we make fun of them. There's this little kernel of true emotion, even in all of the humor. And I've always liked that interpretation of the last play.
- [111:48]
Pat Wright
Yeah. Well, that's a good comedy. We'll do that for you. Right.
- [111:51]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
There's always a little bit of.
- [111:52]
Pat Wright
Have some true humanity.
- [111:54]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yeah. Of sadness. But the play is over.
- [111:57]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [111:58]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And it is time to go to bed.
- [111:59]
Pat Wright
Oh, we're going to sleep again.
- [112:01]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Yes.
- [112:01]
Pat Wright
Or at least go to bed.
- [112:02]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
We haven't slept enough. But this is the important sleep. This is the sleep of people who have just gotten married. So they're going to go to bed, and for that they will need the blessing of the fairies.
- [112:15]
Pat Wright
Yes. It's interesting. I feel like with the Shakespeare, it's bookended by the mortal world, but here we're starting and ending with the fairies. But Puck also gives an epilogue in the Shakespeare original.
- [112:28]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
It's kind of like. It's less rigid. It's more like we start with the mortals in the mortal world, and then we go to the fairies in the fairy world and the mortals in the fairy world, and then we get the fairies in the mortal world. So it's a little bit of intertwining, because I think it's two sides of the same coin. There's who you are during the day, and then the dreams you have at night are the fairy part of you, I think.
- [112:49]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [112:50]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
And so the fairies, Oberon and Titania, bless the marriages and bless the marriage beds, and we get a lovely, lovely song of blessing.
- [113:00]
Pat Wright
Wonderful. Well, we'll listen to that to end our show. But, Kathleen, I thank you so much for doing this with me. And I want to recommend to anyone who has an opportunity to see this particular show, please go see it. It's a little harder to find than some of our operas online, so it's a real treat to get to see it as a live well, it's a treat for any opera, honestly, as a live performance, but it's a wonderful show. It's a great thing to have in your mind when you're watching listening to the Purcell opera. And I'm so glad we had an opportunity to do both of these operas based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Kathleen, thank you.
- [113:42]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
You're welcome. We'll just have to see what Shakespeare play we pick next.
- [113:45]
Pat Wright
Oh, yes.
- [114:05]
Puck
That lies in woe in the remembrance of a shroud. Now it is a dark night. Everyone lives on this brightness all around.
- [114:46]
Oberon
I am sent with broom before to sweep the dust behind the door.
- [115:05]
Pat Wright
Through.
- [115:06]
Puck
The house keep glimmering light every elf and fairy spirit. R.A.
- [117:15]
Pat Wright
Thanks for listening to another episode of Opera for Everyone. I've been your host today, Pat Wright.
- [117:20]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Joined by Kathleen Vandewille.
- [117:22]
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.
- [117:29]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Opera can be challenging, but everyone loves a good story.
- [117:33]
Pat Wright
And a story set to music gets even better.
- [117:37]
Kathleen Vanderwyl
Our mission is to make opera understandable, accessible, and enjoyable because we believe opera is for everyone.
- [117:48]
Oberon
If we shadows have offended, think about this and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear. Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend. Else the Puck a liar call. So good night unto you all. Give me your hands if we be friends and Robin shall restore.
- [118:25]
Pat Wright
Amen. It.