Heading towards the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center last Saturday to attend the opening of Atlanta Opera’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, my anticipation mixed with a shade of dread. With the company’s recent designation as a Budget One company by Opera America last year, there has been (allegedly) renewed enthusiasm among local opera goers, alongside the occasional eye roll from neighboring regional hubs (again, allegedly). Whether this recent turn of events will yield significant artistic gains or reawaken the opera-hungry audience that welcomed the Metropolitan Opera tour the previous century remains to be seen. What is true is that attendance at Atlanta Opera performances has visibly increased, and I see more likes on the Atlanta Opera posts on various social media platforms, which the Gen Alpha kids tell me is a good thing.
Regardless, a certain buzz has been in the air, and the ante has been growing well before the Atlanta Opera got approved for the platinum card. In January, when Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun announced the company’s Budget One status on the opening night performance of Puccini’s La Boheme, the sold-out audience went crazy. Those who follow this blog will remember that I had concerns with the opening night presentation and made it a point to return for a second hearing. I am thrilled to report that I had trouble obtaining tickets for the Friday show!
With these thoughts in mind, I arrived at the theater fearing the blue balloon would burst. For context, Atlanta opera audiences have not been exposed to a great deal of live performances of Benjamin Britten’s operas, and save the one production of Britten’s Albert Herring in 1992, the great English composer’s works have been absent from the Atlanta Opera repertoire in the company’s 44 year history. To an audience used to a steady diet of German, Italian and French staples, Britten’s kitchen offers very different proteins with decidedly clearer sauces. Under Director Zvulun’s leadership, the company has acclimated well to modern works, and with the polarizing social shifts outside of the auditorium, a case can be made for the works of the trailblazing and defiant English pioneer.
This is a man who embarked in a then illegal homosexual relationship with his artistic muse (the celebrated tenor Peter Pears) as the world headed into World War II. Until the passing of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, the couple lived under the perpetual threat of being exposed and potentially prosecuted for their “crimes”. Despite their relationship being an open secret, Britten and Pears managed to cohabitate as a married couple for nearly 40 years, and in the process, Britten – inspired by Pears – wrote some of the most important operas of the 20th century. A great lot of them, among them Peter Grimes, Albert Herring, Death in Venice, Billy Budd, The Rape of Lucretia, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, are laden with queer coded subjects previously ignored by his great straight predecessors. The fear of exposure and the potential blowback notwithstanding, Britten boldly moved forward, daringly expanding the boundaries of homosexual expression in mid-20th century England in the most public and deliciously artful of ways. Take for instance the premiere of his first canticle on November 1st, 1947: Accompanying Peters Pears at the piano, the glittery audience at Central Hall in Westminster got to hear the handsome tenor utter lyrics such as “for I was flax, and he was flames of fire. Our firm-united souls did more than twine; So I my best beloved’s am; so he is mine” all meant for the guy at the keyboard, and the few members of the audience receptive to such dog whistling.
Such radical exuberance notwithstanding, the pressure to both trailblaze while remaining within its legal boundaries of society took a toll on Britten that clearly bled into his compositions. His musical language strikes the ear as divergent and conflicted, often posing proud questions and projecting proud wishes, and can be polarizing to many. I count myself among those who do not include a steady dose of Britten in my operatic diet – yet find myself surprisingly enthralled whenever I venture into his corner. This applies to the performance in question, as I found myself thoroughly engaged and haunted by the experience that is Britten’s uniquely magical adaptation of the popular Shakespeare play. And though the sight of empty seats in the auditorium confirmed my original fears, I hope that those who opted to join me at the theater last Saturday will be primed for future helpings of Britten as the Atlanta Opera continues to expand its growing repertoire.
This production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes to Atlanta in collaboration with Cincinnati Opera and its directed by Tomer Zvulun. The main set design by Steven Kemp features a series of interconnected wooden staircases evocative of MC Escher’s work adapted to resemble The Globe Theatre. High-definition screens have been placed within the set and well into the auditorium in order to facilitate the filmed media designs of Felipe Barral and Amanda Sachtleben, and promote an immersive experience for the audience. At key moments, famous lines from the play are featured on these screens as the lines are being delivered, creating a type of digestible hashtag to accompany the proceedings. Lighting designer Thomas Hase must have worked very closely with the projection designing team of Nicholas Hussong and Jamie Godwin to produce the subtle atmosphere in this enchanted forest. The overall effect is visually striking and cleverly promotes the disorienting and magical happenings plaguing the principals. Costume designer Erik Teague dazzling creations, in collaboration with found their best expression when dressing the fairy and mechanicals delegations, while the Athenian lovers period update was hard to pin down (rumblings of “Scooby doo”, “Old Navy rack, and 60’s preppy” could be heard during the first intermission). Armed with this spectacular setting, staging director Bruno Baker set about the difficult task of directing a comedy, and judging by the many chuckles heard throughout the night, he landed many jokes, yielding his best results in his work with the delegation of fairies and mechanicals, particularly the love making scene between Tytania and Bottom, and the Pyramus and Thisbe play in the final act.
Leading the charge from the pit, conductor Louis Lohraseb makes his Atlanta Opera debut in these performances of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and it is quite a task, because Britten starts with a bang and dunks the listener’s musical ear under a very special brand of musical water. Elongated string figures – like rubber bands being stretched and sprinkled with figures from the celesta, create an augmented atmosphere of reality stretching beyond itself to a foreign place where the rules we know do not apply. The introduction of Oberon and Tytania, announced by the fairies and peppered by cartoonish trumpet calls, heralds both a hybrid of Britten’s idol Henry Purcell in its setting of a counter tenor against a light lyric soprano, filtered through exuberance of Massenet as Oberon soars over the voices of the wood spirits in a way not too distant from Esclarmonde. The two high voices soar, sometimes mimicking their lines, sometimes diverging from it, like birds of prey fighting in mid-air, one bright and crystalline, the other high and alien, as the fairies react and the orchestral texture weaves a decadent ruckus. It is fairy war, both miniscule and terrible. Throughout the evening, Maestro Lohraseb’s baton remained admirably tidy and consistent, a feat unto itself considering that he is leading a very large cast of principals and negotiating a very sophisticated orchestration.
Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream boasts an uncommonly large number of principals with frequent opportunities to show their worth. Top vocal honors were reserved for the delegation of Fairies, starting off with the stylish Oberon of countertenor Iestyn Davies, who scored a triumphant Atlanta Opera debut with these performances. The possessor of an instrument of incessant presence and size uncommon for his fach (countertenor voices tend to veer huffy, airy and devoid of incisive qualities) his singing revealed a meticulously crafted vocalism and was quite expressive within the boundaries of his method. His phrasing is well proportioned, always elegant, and his scale work tidy and artful. He more than validates Britten’s decision to cast Oberon as a countertenor to lend an ethereal, uncomfortably supernatural element to the score. He was a sight to behold in his Fairy King get up, a handsome, dark haired relative of David Bowie’s Goblin King from Labyrinth. Rising to the occasion, soprano Liv Redpath also hit it out of the park with her Atlanta Opera debut as the Fairy Queen Tytania on the opening night performance. Her soprano is a colorful instrument which expands the gamut of the lyric designation, yet it has retained the youthful appeal of a soubrette. When unleashed with due effort, the full voice can weave and float above Britten’s orchestra without loss of tonal beauty, and like Mr. Davies, she lavished full attention to the phrasing, creating a spellbinding effect in her extended scenes with Bottom. Every note seemed prepared and imbued with her richest tones available. Her timbre is fresh, and well suited for the cooler repertoire (classical and baroque roles comes easily to mind) which we hope she is allowed to explore as long as nature allows (though her upcoming debut at Covent Garden this April as Lucia implies contradiction). Narrating the length of the evening, mezzo-soprano Megan Marino projected a rambunctious and boyish Puck. Though the strength of her declamation made its due impact (Puck is a speaking role in the opera) it was partly questioned by the amplification applied to her efforts, a practice that even at its most sparse can take the audience out of the opera and alter the sonic playing field.
Though decidedly less polished, the Athenian lovers were nevertheless well represented by a quartet of young artists. Leading the pack was the Lysander of tenor Kameron Lopreore, who has found better traction ever since I witnessed his performance as Riccardo Fenimoore in Pacini’s Maria, Regina d’Inghilterra back in 2019. Now a Glynn Studio Artist with several seasons under his belt, and entrusted with a role of a far more amicable profile, Mr. Lopreore revealed greater confidence in stage deportment and vocalism as Lysander. The role exploits a more central tessitura, which the tenor negotiates evenly though his registers, all the while boasting the clearest diction to be heard among the lovers. In the part of Lysander’s frenemy, baritone Luke Sutliff makes his Atlanta Opera debut in the role of Demetrius. A member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, Mr. Sutliff followed Mr. Leopreore’s lead in confident vocalism, fiery charisma and clear diction. Their female counterparts were less successful.
Making her Atlanta Opera debut with these performances, mezzo-soprano Melody Wilson was an expressive Hermia despite an overtly covered production which rendered the voice husky, often causing her instrument to merge head first into the orchestral texture instead of floating on it. Her efforts were slightly bettered by the Helena of soprano Susanne Burgess, a returning artist who has scored success in the part two years ago at the very fine Des Moines Metro Opera Summer Festival. Ms. Burgess’s soprano is limpid and agreeable, but tends to be shrill in the middle register when pressured. A remarkably tall artist for her fach (sopranos tend to be short), Ms. Burgess was finely cast against Ms. Wilson’s shorter frame in order to bank on the physical reads dished out in Act II. Dramatically, their interactions achieved greater chemistry when dealing with one another as opposed to when dealing with their male counterparts, and when a kiss between the ladies crowned the scene, it struck as a natural conclusion. Both suffered from cloudy diction, called out by use of the vernacular in the opera, forcing the listener to peek towards the projected supertitles with greater frequency whenever either entered the stage.
In contrast, the delegation of Mechanicals scored successes in both individual appeal and as a sum of their parts. Disparate, zany and often outrageous, bass Andrew Potter as Quince, bass-baritone Jason Zacher as Snug, bass-baritone Andrew Gilstrap as Starveling and tenor Wayd Odle as Snout exploited their opportunities with careful finesse, culminating in their staging of the Pyramus and Thisbe tragedy in the Act III, which, if anything, threatened to tip the evening’s balance towards the third act. They were led by the hilarious Kevin Burdette as Bottom, whom Atlanta Opera audiences fondly remember as George Benton in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and Osmin in Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. A veteran comprimario bass, Mr. Burdette is capable of artfully scoring winning performances despite limited vocal resources, and though Bottom is no Osmin, it further revealed a voice that is rapidly losing texture and knit. Pesky details aside, he dominated the stage with impeccable comic timing, and contrasted beautifully with the crystalline presence of Ms. Redpath’s Tytania in their Act II opening scene, all while wearing the coolest pair of creepers. I wonder if he attempted to talk Mr. Teagues into letting him keep them.
His love interest in the tragedy, the tenor role of Flute, requires special mention. The comic part was originally assigned to Peter Pears, who must have delighted at taking part in the multi-layered entendre of a male character in drag featured in a comedy about misdirected affections and identities – which also features a leading male character portrayed by a countertenor. I spot many laughs and plenty of winks. The part of Flute also endowed Pears to add another mad scene to his repertoire (to accompany the tremendous one from Peter Grimes), this time a spoof on the famous scena from Lucia di Lammermoor, surely fresh on the minds and ears of all Brits thanks to a landmark production of the Donizetti opera starring a certain Australian soprano the previous year. Whether Britten wrote the spoof to satisfy his vision or his partner’s wish to play out Joan Sutherland drag in public is a toss-up. Remember, the rules of our world do not apply. Stepping in for the originally announced Brian Frutiger, the Atlanta Opera audience was not ready for the unexpected debut of legendary tenor Barry Banks, who is honestly wasted in the part of Flute. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Banks took every opportunity to challenge Mr. Burdette for attention in the comedic department and was tremendously effective, but the conceptualization of his character did little to feature the bel canto qualities for which he is truly famous. Atlanta has heard him, but not really heard him yet. The excellent cast was rounded off by strong, debonair contributions of bass-baritone Corey McGee as Theseus and lyric mezzo-soprano Rehanna Thelwell as his bride Hippolyta.
The Atlanta Opera’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a real feast for the eyes and ears, and those wishing to trade our strange reality for a similarly distorted one, or if you’re looking for a palate cleanser between January’s La Boheme and April’s Die Walkure, there are two remaining performances this week. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.atlantaopera.org
-Daniel Vasquez