Autumn 2017Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a magical adventure through the twists and turns of romance, in which fairies and men fall in and out of love in a flutter. The play has been a standard at theatres for more than 400 years, and it is a tantalising treasure trove for a choreographer’s imagination too.
Recommended for children over the age of 7. Students of the Finnish National Opera Ballet School will be performing in the ballet among the dancers of FNB.
Internationally acclaimed choreographer Jorma Elo was inspired both by the layered action in the play and by the incidental music written by Felix Mendelssohn. The result is an entertaining, insightful and for the dancer technically demanding work that leaves no viewer cold. Elo received the ‘Oscar of the dance world’, the Benois de la danse prize, for the premiere of this work by the Vienna State Opera Ballet in 2010.
The miraculous beauty of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is embellished by its music, composed by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Its most famous number by far is the Wedding March. In Jorma Elo’s ballet, the incidental music is augmented with other Mendelssohn works that share the same aesthetic.
– Jorma Elo, choreographer
The court at Athens is preparing for the wedding of Duke Theseus to Hippolyta. Demetrius and Lysander are in love with Hermia. Her father Egeus has chosen Demetrius to marry his daughter, but Hermia is in love with Lysander. Hermia and Lysander swear eternal love to one another and are prepared to flee from the reach of the law. Helen, who is in love with Demetrius, follows the action jealously.
A group of craftsmen is rehearsing a play for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta as the young lovers arrive. Puck, a fairy, and Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, also arrive, as Oberon, King of the Fairies demands that Titania return the Indian girl that she has kidnapped for her servant. Oberon plots with Puck to gain the girl for himself. With the nectar from a magic herb he is given by Puck, Oberon intends to make Titania give up the girl and to make Demetrius fall in love with Helen. Puck drips the nectar into Lysander’s eyes by mistake, believing him to be Demetrius. Lysander falls in love with Helen. Puck enchants Bottom, one of the craftsmen, into a donkey, and Titania, also under the influence of the magic nectar, falls in love with him.
Then Oberon drips nectar into Demetrius’s eyes. The result is that both Demetrius and Lysander chase after Helen, who believes that they are mocking her. Once the young men are exhausted, Puck again drips nectar into Lysander’s eyes to correct his mistake.
Titania is in love with the donkey, and they go to sleep together. Oberon wakes up Titania with a kiss, and the two are reconciled. The eloping couple is discovered in the forest. Because Demetrius now loves Helen, there is no obstacle to Hermia marrying Lysander. Bottom has regained his human form and finally returns to the scene when a triple wedding is about to commence.
A full synopsis and background information are available in the programme booklet.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was streamed online on Finnish National Opera and Ballet Stage24 and HSTV on 21st October 2017. The opera is now available as video on demand.
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