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55 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960)
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Published:July 2003
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BBC: Mr Britten, this work is called an opera based on the work of Shakespeare. Have you in fact set Shakespeare’s lines to music?BRITTEN: Yes, Shakespeare’s text is the basis of the whole work. I think we’ve included half a line which is not written by Shakespeare, but otherwise it is only his words which we’ve used.1BBC: What were your feelings about the shaping of Shakespeare’s thoughts to a medium he didn’t intend them for? BRITTEN: Well, that does n’t worry me so much, because Shakespeare can look after himself and however well or badly or much I cut the work, the text thank goodness-remains. But my main feeling in setting this work was enormous love and reverence and respect for the text. I feel that everyone ought to set Shakespeare to music in order just to get to know the incredible beauty and intensity of these words. BBC: What made you want to write an opera, then, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream particularly? BRITTEN: Well, I wanted to set a play of Shakespeare’s for several reasons. One was that it had to be done in rather a hurry, and there wasn’t time to get a libretto specially written, and so one had to take work-words which already existed. The Midsummer Night’s Dream-oh; for several reasons-seemed to be most suitable; partly because it has such amazingly beautiful poetry already intended for singing. A lot of the fairies’ words were intended to be songs. It is a very good operatic story-it has very clear situations and it has, what fascinated me particularly, these three different levels of creatures in it. It has the royal humans, Theseus, Hyppolyta, and the lovers; it has the rustics, these lovable peasants rustics-who behave so beautifully and charmingly throughout; and then of course these curious fairy creatures, Tytania and Oberon and the-Puck and the others.
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