‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ returns after 20 years to the Teatro Real with Deborah Warner and Ivor Bolton

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’the operatic adaptation that Benjamin Britten made of William Shakespeare’s comedy returns to the Teatro Real after 20 yearswhich will offer six performances between March 10 and 22, thanks to a new stage production by Deborha Warner and with the musical direction of Ivor Bolton.

It will be a show that will try to take the viewer into an enchanted forest with fairies, elves, courtly lovers and rough artisans, thanks to this new production that will be presented later in the co-producing theaters: the Royal Ballet and Opera of London and the Teatro Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

The artistic team of the opera is thus the same that in 2017 put ‘Billy Budd’ on stage and in 2021 ‘Peter Grimes’, since together with Bolton and Warner, Kim Brandstrup will be in the choreography.

The artistic director of the Teatro Real, Joan Matabosch, has highlighted that Britten is a composer who “was not very introduced into the theater repertoire.” “This means that when there is a strategy for the theater to really bet on a composer who little by little becomes known, the one who the proposals are very well accepted and work and have the success that they have had, since it greatly favors that in some way this ends up becoming part of the collective cultural heritage“, he highlighted.

In this staging, Deborah Warner enhances the mysterious, delirious and grotesque atmosphere of the opera, creating a fantasy world with the complicity of the set designer Christof Hetzer – author of the installation that serves as a conceptual framework for the plot -, the illuminator Urs Schönebaum and the costume designer Luis Filipe Carvalho, who designed costumes that highlight the differentiation of the groups that star in the opera: that of fairies, that of Athenian lovers and that of rustic artisans.

“We have created an installation that is not a representation of a forest, nor is it a forest like the forest in a children’s story would be, but rather it is an installation that has aspects that evoke a forest, but has many other aspects in which the viewer’s fantasy or the viewer’s imagination can work.“, said the stage director, Deborah Warner, at a press conference.

Benjamin Britten was commissioned to compose an opera for the opening of the renovated Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh in 1960, with barely a year’s notice. In seven months, the score of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was finished, with an impeccable reduction and adaptation of the homonymous work by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), which preserved the essence of the plot and also the entire text of the characters, with the exception of a single phrase: “Compelling thee to marry with Demetrius.”

The opera, as Warner has commented, begins directly in the forest and not in the court of Athens, where Shakespeare placed the beginning.

“Something very distinctive about Britten’s wonderful work is that there are four worlds: that of the court, that of the fairies, that of the rustic artisans and that of the lovers. These four worlds are very different and collide and merge in the forest“Warner explained.

Thus, the Real stage will become a space with swings, with water and plant elements and two dimensions: terrestrial and aerial. “We could think that it is an art gallery installation,” said the stage director.

In the opera, children and adolescents have an important role in the recreation of the fairy world, with the participation of the ORCAM children’s choir Little Singers – prepared, as always, by its director, Ana González -, 20 child actors (between 4 and 8 years old) – five of them belonging to the Chiquicoro – Daniel Martín de Alcorcón -, as well as young dancers and actors.

AN “INNOCENT” AND “BEAUTIFUL” FAIRY KINGDOM

Ivor Bolton returns to direct this new production at the Teatro Real, reuniting with his Main Orchestra, after having been, until last summer, its musical director (2015-2025).

“The world of the forest is a world accompanied by instruments like the harp to evoke that magical world. In the world of lovers, the music is much more traditional, with evocations of the baroque. And as for the world of rustics, it has this comical side and also a little more accompanied by woodwind, in the low ranges and brass in the higher ranges. It is a much more neoclassical musical style,” Bolton detailed.

Leading an ensemble cast of singer-actors will be Iestyn Davies (Oberon), Liv Redpath (Tytania), Daniel Abelson and aerial dancer Juan Leiba (Puck), Thomas Oliemans (Theseus), Christine Rice (Hippolyta), Sam Furness (Lysander), Jacques Imbrailo (Demetrius), Simone McIntosh (Hermia), Jacquelyn Wagner (Helena), Clive Bayley (Botton), Henry Waddington (Fifteen), Ru Charlesworth (Flute), Stephen Richardson (Snug), John Graham-Hall (Snout) and William Dazeley (Starveling).

“The fairy kingdom is the one in charge of harmony in the world, between people, the earth, living beings, the one that makes everything hold together.“explained Davies, who plays Oberon, the king of the fairies, whose task is to maintain harmony between people, the earth and all living beings.

In this sense, he details that at the beginning of the opera “the situation is one of great instability in this world due to the fight” between Oberon and Titania.

Playing Titania will be Liv Redpath, who has maintained that Britten was “obsessed” with innocence and beauty, which is why children appear in his operas. “Precisely here he decides to start talking about the world of fairies, a place with innocence. For once, Britten composed something with a happy ending and elements of comedy“, he stated. The performances are sponsored by BBVA.