Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. "Over hill, over dale" - Downside School, Purley, Choir Of, Emanuel School Wandsworth, Boys' Choir, Richard Dakin, John Pryor, Ian Wodehouse, Gordon Clark, Stephen Terry, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
2. "Oberon is passing fell and wrath" - Downside School, Purley, Choir Of, Emanuel School Wandsworth, Boys' Choir, Alfred Deller, Elizabeth Harwood, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
3. "Well, go thy way" - Alfred Deller, Stephen Terry, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
4. "How now my love?" - Peter Pears, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
5. "Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull" - Alfred Deller, Thomas Hemsley, Heather Harper, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
6. "Welcome wanderer!" - Alfred Deller, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
7. "Is all our company her?" - Norman Lumsden, Kenneth McDonald, Owen Brannigan, Keith Raggett, Robert Tear, David Kelly, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
8. "Fair love, you faint with wand'ring in the wood" - Peter Pears, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
9. "Through the forest have I gone" - Stephen Terry, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
10. "Stay, though thou kill me, sweet Demetrius" - Heather Harper, Thomas Hemsley, Peter Pears, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
11. "Come, now a roundel and a fairy song" - Elizabeth Harwood, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
12. "You spotted snakes with double tongue" - Richard Dakin, John Pryor, Ian Wodehouse, Gordon Clark, Downside School, Purley, Choir Of, Emanuel School Wandsworth, Boys' Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
13. "What thou seest when thou dost wake" - Alfred Deller, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
14. Introduction: The wood - London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
15. "Are we all met?" - Owen Brannigan, Norman Lumsden, Kenneth McDonald, David Kelly, Robert Tear, Keith Raggett, Stephen Terry, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
16. "I see their knavery" - Owen Brannigan, Elizabeth Harwood, John Pryor, Richard Dakin, Ian Wodehouse, Gordon Clark, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
17. "Be kind and courteous to this gentleman" - Elizabeth Harwood, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
18. "Hail, mortal, hail!" - Richard Dakin, John Pryor, Ian Wodehouse, Gordon Clark, Owen Brannigan, Elizabeth Harwood, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
19. "I have a reas'nable good ear in music" - Owen Brannigan, Elizabeth Harwood, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
20. "How now, mad spirit?" - Alfred Deller, Stephen Terry, Thomas Hemsley, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten

Disc 2:

1. "Flower of this purple dye" - Alfred Deller, Stephen Terry, Peter Pears, Heather Harper, Thomas Hemsley, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
2. "Puppet? Why so?" - Josephine Veasey, Heather Harper, Peter Pears, Thomas Hemsley, Stephen Terry, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
3. "This is thy negligence" - Alfred Deller, Stephen Terry, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
4. "Up and down, up and down" - Stephen Terry, Peter Pears, Thomas Hemsley, Heather Harper, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
5. "On the ground, sleep sound" - Downside School, Purley, Choir Of, Emanuel School Wandsworth, Boys' Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
6. "My gentle Robin, see'st thou this sweet sight?" - Alfred Deller, Elizabeth Harwood, Stephen Terry, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
7. "Helena! Hermi! Demetrius! Lysander!" - Thomas Hemsley, Peter Pears, Heather Harper, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
8. "When my cue comes, call me" - Owen Brannigan, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
9. "Have you sent to Bottom's house?" - Norman Lumsden, Keith Raggett, Robert Tear, Kenneth McDonald, Owen Brannigan, David Kelly, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
10. "Now, fair Hippolyta" - John Shirley-Quirk, Helen Watts, Peter Pears, Thomas Hemsley, Heather Harper, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
11. "Iff we offend, it is with our good will" - Owen Brannigan, Kenneth McDonald, Norman Lumsden, David Kelly, Robert Tear, Keith Raggett, John Shirley-Quirk, Helen Watts, Peter Pears, Thomas Hemsley, Heather Harper, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
12. "Gentles, perchange you wonder at this show" - Norman Lumsden, Heather Harper, Thomas Hemsley, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
13. "In this same interlude it doth befall" - Robert Tear, Josephine Veasey, Peter Pears, John Shirley-Quirk, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
14. "O grim-look'd night, O night with hue so black" - Owen Brannigan, John Shirley-Quirk, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
15. "O wall, fur often hast thou heard my moans" - Kenneth McDonald, Owen Brannigan, Robert Tear, Helen Watts, John Shirley-Quirk, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
16. "You ladies, you whose gentle hearts do fear" - David Kelly, Josephine Veasey, Thomas Hemsley, John Shirley-Quirk, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
17. "This lanthorn doth the horned moon present" - Keith Raggett, Peter Pears, John Shirley-Quirk, Thomas Hemsley, Helen Watts, Kenneth McDonald, David Kelly, Josephine Veasey, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
18. "Sweet moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams" - Owen Brannigan, Helen Watts, Thomas Hemsley, John Shirley-Quirk, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
19. "Asleep, my love?" - Kenneth McDonald, John Shirley-Quirk, Peter Pears, Owen Brannigan, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
20. "Come, your Bergomask" - John Shirley-Quirk, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
21. "Now the hungry lion roars" - Richard Dakin, John Pryor, Ian Wodehouse, Gordon Clark, Stephen Terry, Alfred Deller, Elizabeth Harwood, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68812 in Music
• Released on: 1990-03-22
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Box set
• Running time: 144 minutes

Customer Reviews

MAGICAL PERFORMANCE: MAGICAL OPERA
This was the first opera I ever saw live, during its initial London run a few months after the Aldeburgh premiere. I still carry vivid memories of that evening as a magical experience. And magic certainly lies at the heart of this entrancing (almost literally) piece.

From the sounds of the forest breathing in the opening string glissandos to the fairies' glittering benediction on Duke Theseus house at the end, Britten conjures a wonderful array of colours and pictures from his relatively modest orchestra. Each group of characters is given its own distinctive orchestral palette - strings with woodwinds predominate for the Lovers, the trombone fills in its fatter, comical tones when the Rustics appear, horns add a touch of regality for Theseus' court and the Fairies sparkle with the inspired combination of Purcellian harpsichord with harp and modern tuned percussion. Puck flits around with a sprightly trumpet always in tow (brilliantly played by William Lang on this recording).

But the piece is much deeper and more disturbing than all that surface magic suggests. Britten and Pears extracted one of the most successful of all Shakespearean librettos from the play. They managed to excise the whole of Shakespeare's First Act merely by the addition of their one and only original line ('Compelling thee to marry with Demetrius'). Thus the opera focuses even more than the play on the Wood and the misunderstandings, confusions, dreams, nightmares and, above all, the power of sleep that it brings to all the characters (including, of course, Oberon and Tytania despite their delusions of omnipotence). Sleep with its benign and malign effects was a preoccupation of Britten's throughout his career - from Les Illuminations and the Serenade through Let Us Sleep in War Requiem and Dormi nunc in the Cantata Misericordium to Aschenbach's Dionysian nightmare in Death in Venice. The deepest explorations, though, are contained in the contemporaneous Nocturne and here in the Dream.

The key to this is Act 2 of the opera and the four 'sleep' chords that open it and on which the whole structure is based. Between them they contain all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. But this is no serial piece. The implicit dissonances can certainly cloud the harmonic air at moments of crisis and conflict, but the key centres implied by each chord can also restore consonance again. And all four chords provide a healing benediction below Puck's 'Jack shall have Jill' prophesy at the end of the Act.

None of this takes away from the fact that this is, of course, a comedy - it merely serves, as in all great comedies, to deepen the human impact. Much of the opera is very funny - the lovers' confusions, the big quarrel scene and, naturally, much of the Rustics material. The Pyramus & Thisbe play has come in for its share of stick - too arch, too knowing, etc. - but I still find Britten's parodies of grand and bel canto operas funny, especially the way he takes the Michael out of Bellini and Donizetti.

This recording, under the composer's direction, has most things going for it, not least Britten's impeccable pacing of the score. The lovers are a mixed bunch: Veasey and Harper are excellent, Hemsley very good, but Pears is hopelessly miscast as Lysander. Flute was his part in the premiere and was probably the best part for him - he caught 'Oh sweet bully Bottom' perfectly. But he is frankly too old, too knowing and the wrong voice for the ardent young lover. Brannigan is by far the best Bottom on disc - as well as all the knockabout stuff, he captures the awe, the wonder and the sense of a life changed by his experiences to perfection in Bottom's Dream. The rest of the Rustics, ably led by Norman Lumsden's Peter Quince (J.R.Hartley, no less), are all worthy of their starring roles in the play as well as in their contributions to the rehearsals. The Fairies are a match for any of their rivals on disc. Deller may lack some of the darker, more menacing side of Oberon's character that James Bowman captures so well, but his singing of the ravishingly Purcellian 'I know a bank' is matchless. So, too the late Elizabeth Harwood in all Tytania's florid coloratura passages.

While Colin Davis and Richard Hickox produce performances of this many-layered opera that make for fascinating comparisons with this first recorded reading, these are still the yardstick discs of Britten's Dream.

Haunting and evocative...once heard never forgotten.
As soon as you hear the glissandi double basses at the opening of this opera you will enter the world of Titania and Oberon.Britten captures this other worldliness by making Oberon a counter-tenor,a vocal quality both strange and powerful in this magical world. Childrens voices add to the atmosphere of delicacy; Puck circles the world and Titania -a high lyric soprano idles away with some of the most heart moving arias.
Britten's use of a small orcheatra creates all the varied colour needed for the fairy world and that of the mechanicals.
Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the best 'stories' there is and in the hands of Britten becomes even more 'fantastic'.I can't recommend it highly enough to someone who has never tried a Britten opera...you will be amazed!