A Midsummer Night's Dream
Premiere
Cast 02.10.2019
Details
It was a passion project for Herbert von Karajan to bring Benjamin Britten’s »A Midsummer Night's Dream« to the Vienna State Opera in 1962, immediately following its successful premiere. Yet the opera had not been performed since – for more than 50 years – until Simone Young and Irina Brook made it a sell-out hit in 2019. In her staging, Brook leads us into a fairytale-like, enchanted hall, where the characters get lost between dream and reality, forbidden desires and yearnings left unacknowledged. An amusing and light piece of music theatre – and yet utterly poetic and psychological. In Young's musical interpretation, Britten's sensual, expressive music that juggles historical quotes becomes an acoustic experience in which the clarity of chamber music meets symphonic power.
It was a passion project for Herbert von Karajan to bring Benjamin Britten’s »A Midsummer Night's Dream« to the Vienna State Opera in 1962, immediately following its successful premiere. Yet the opera had not been performed since – for more than 50 years – until Simone Young and Irina Brook made it a sell-out hit in 2019. In her staging, Brook leads us into a fairytale-like, enchanted hall, where the characters get lost between dream and reality, forbidden desires and yearnings left unacknowledged. An amusing and light piece of music theatre – and yet utterly poetic and psychological. In Young's musical interpretation, Britten's sensual, expressive music that juggles historical quotes becomes an acoustic experience in which the clarity of chamber music meets symphonic power.