Metropolitan Opera Archives

The news at the Met was the company's first production of Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I don't think the opera works, for all the beauties in its second act, mostly because I don't think the play works. Lysander and Demetrius are ciphers, who significantly do not even show hostility to each other in the real world, only in the charmed world. Helena is terribly put upon (especially in this production, where she has to wear six-inch heels to walk steep slopes), and comes to life only in the first-act soliloquy that leads to her betrayal of her friend and sets up Puck's future errors. The rude mechanicals are good fun, especially here, where they are dressed as Chicago mobsters ca. 1925; and Peter Rose made a smashing debut as Bottom. But they do go on, and Shakespeare's lengthy guying of his audience in the concluding Pyramus and Thisbe is made no more interesting by Britten's musical parodies.

A more magical production might have left me with a more positive attitude, for the piece does indeed evoke the night and the moon and the music. The woodwind writing is gorgeously delicate, and the trumpet sounds mysterious (trumpeter Mark Gould gets a separate credit in the programme) - and the reduced orchestra, every instrument superbly played, filled the giant open house. David Atherton's musical direction seemed to me flawless. But in Tim Albery'sproduction (designs by Antony McDonald) the revolving stage cannot save the papier-mâché pieces on it, darkish. slightly-off colours. childish shapes and lots of doors. The decision to dress the boys' chorus in tutus and high heels was, in a word, wrong. And a gauche adolescent Puck who speaks his lines to musical accompaniment is a gamble Britten loses when the performer speaks in flat American.

Among the soloists, Sylvia McNair as Tytania was outstanding, bright as a bell on December 2. Jochen Kowalski was a dominating Oberon, and the four lovers sang well - Kurt Streit, Rodney Gilfry, Jane Bunnell and Nancy Gustafson - though they couldn't put much personality into their characters. John Del Carlo as Quince was able to control Peter Rose's Bottom. Which is saying quite a lot.

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