Last Updated on October 13, 2025
Sir Peter Hall’s Dream Lives On
4.5 out of 5.0 starsThere are productions that are pulled out of the operatic closet over many decades, veritable warhorses some of which creak and groan like ancient equines bearing a load that they are no longer fit for. But tonight’s revival of Sir Peter Hall’s classic 1981 Festival production of Benjamin Britten’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ with its fine young cast, was met with a roar of approval from the autumn season crowd and still felt as magical and dreamlike as ever.
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was first staged at Aldeburgh in 1960 to rave reviews. This revival was directed by the original choreographer, Lynne Hockney, ensuring an authentic rendering of Hall’s vision. The libretto is built on Britten and Peter Pears’ edit of Shakespeare’s text, cut and reshaped for the operatic stage. Britten’s score operates in 3 zones – the magical, the comic and the romantic, with a transparent orchestration that illuminates the dark emotional subtexts of Britten’s score, whilst also marking the comedic elements with cartoonish trombones. The composer’s vocal lines are mostly unmelismatic, creating a theatrical sense of immediacy with some gorgeous quasi-fugal ensemble writing.
The story is set in the Athens area and centres around four couples. Hermia has been ordered by her father to marry Demetrius, however she loves Lysander and they elope. Hermia has confided her plans to her friend Helena who loves Demetrius. Helena tells Demetrius, and all four young lovers end up in the nearby forest. In the fairy realm of the forest, King Oberon and Queen Tytania are quarrelling over the ’ownership’ of the queen’s young page. Oberon instructs his mischievous servant Puck to to make Tytania fall in love with the first creature she sees upon waking. Oberon also orders Puck to use the flower on Demetrius to make him love Helena. However, Puck mistakenly enchants Lysander instead. Chaos ensues as both Lysander and Demetrius pursue Helena, while Hermia is left confused and heartbroken.
Meanwhile, a group of amateur actors rehearses a play in the same forest for the upcoming wedding of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta. Puck also transforms Bottom, one of the actors, by giving him a donkey’s head. Tytania awakens and falls in love with the transfigured Bottom. After a series of comedic mishaps and misunderstandings, Oberon sets things right. The spells are lifted, and the correct couples are paired: Lysander with Hermia, and Demetrius with Helena. Tytania reconciles with Oberon, and Bottom is returned to normal. The opera concludes with the lovers returning to Athens, where they marry alongside Theseus and Hippolyta. The amateur actors perform their humorously bad play at the wedding feast, bringing the magical and mortal worlds together in a joyous celebration.
Director Netia Jones’ recent production at Garsington set the opera in a surreal dreamscape that brought together the arts, science and nature. Designer John Bury’s classic vision at Glyndebourne is rooted in a dreamlike Elizabethan world seen through an Arthur Rackhamesque lens. In the deep-blue light of a full moon created by lighting designer Paul Pyant, we are transported to a mystic fairyland. Trees sway in time to the score’s opening double bass glissandi and the ruff-collared denizens of this netherworld are dressed in black and silver.
German countertenor Nils Wanderer makes his debut at Glyndebourne in his signature role of the fairy King Oberon. An ex-Guildhall student Wanderer’s English diction is perfect and his voice, with its darker lower register, weaves a hypnotic spell over the proceedings.
Jennifer France, an impressive Iphis in Jeptha at the Royal Opera, brings her crystalline coloratura to Queen Tytania, displaying a cool infatuation with donkey-headed Bottom whilst under the influence.
The two young couples are well cast. Robert Lewis’ heroic tenor is perfect for the romantically confused Lysander, veering uncontrollably between love interests as Puck’s interventions play out. Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Wake-Edwards, reprising the role of Hermia that she also performed at Garsington, seems to have developed a brighter top range that gives her characterisation an extra boost. Lanky, floppy-haired and moustachioed Australian baritone Samuel Dale Johnson as Demetrius, who delivered the same role in the Festival’s 2023 production, brings a comedic lyricism to the role. The desperately besotted Helena (“I am your spaniel, the more you beat me, the more I will follow you”) is sung by soprano Alexandra Lowe with a warm-toned and beautifully controlled upper register.
Shakespeare’s mechanicals are similarly on point. Bass-baritone Michael Ronan is pleasingly lugubrious as Quince, Jamie Woollard’s Snug (“I am slow of study”) is endearingly thick and just as gormless as baritone Alex Otterburn’s Starveling. Former Britten-Pears Young Artist James Way, also in the Garsington production, plays the nervous Flute, with his radiant tenor giving vent to his emotions when singing as Pyramus’ lover Thisbe.
Tenor Alasdair Elliott’s Snout made the most of his unenviable role in the play playing a wall. Another Glyndebourne debutee, bass Joshua Bloom as Tytania’s love interest Bottom, impressed in his doublet and breeches both with his resonant vocal tone and his comic ebullience.
The royal roles of Theseus and Hippolyta are regally dull, bringing the opera to a close. British bass-baritone Dingle Yandell as Theseus, an impressive Zuniga in Diane Paulus’ Carmen at Glyndebourne and mezzo-soprano Clare Presland, delightful as failed seductress Pia in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Festen at the Royal Opera, both sang well but have a lot more in the tank dramatically.
Saxon Fox is charming as the non-singing Puck. Sporting a dramatic orange flat top, he is an exuberant sprite, tumbling and sprinting across the stage whilst delivering his lines with an unnerving confidence.
Britten is a peerless composer for children’s choir. Members of Glyndebourne Youth Opera and Trinity Boys Choir take the parts of elven-eared Tytania’s Fairies and they manage his eerie 12-tone melodic shapes with aplomb. Conductor Bertie Baigent delivers a controlled reading of Britten’s score with The Glyndebourne Sinfonia that successfully integrates the composer’s three compositional styles into a coherent whole as well as foregrounding the mystical world that this production is located in.
The recent Garsington production had more humour and a sharper focus but there is a magic about Sir Peter Hall’s vision which matches the sound world of the opera and the focus of the libretto which makes this the definitive production of our time.
Glyndebourne’s autumn season is happening in lieu of the company’s touring productions which were unceremoniously axed by the Arts Council. The upshot is that those of us in the south of the country have access to very reasonably priced productions at the opera house through October and November which we should support. As well as Peter Hall’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ you can see Floris Visser’s ‘La bohème’ and an exciting world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s ‘The Railway Children’ which opens on 30 October, directed by Glyndebourne’s Artistic Director Stephen Langridge with a libretto by Rachael Hewer.y goes here.
12 Oct – 29 Oct
Glyndebourne
Lewes,
East Sussex,
BN8 5UU
Also currently showing at Glyndebourne, do check our review of La bohème
Photos by Tristram Kent
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