Insight Talk: A Midsummer Night's Dream

7 May 2024

Ahead of your visit in the summer, discover more about A Midsummer Night’s Dream with our insight talk combining historical context from leading broadcaster and scholar Sarah Lenton with musical excerpts performed by singers on our Young Artists’ Programme.

There’s something uncanny about Midsummer in Northern climes – and in the opera house. It stirs up half forgotten beliefs in the fairy world, cute (sometimes) glittering, and dangerous. Britten’s opera comes with the Shakespearian cast of young lovers, imperious fairies, and a bunch of well meaning amateur actors, who crash into each other as the midsummer sun sets and moonlight fills the stage.

Join us at the prestigious Mercers’ Hall as Sarah Lenton takes us through a magical and generous score that can accommodate unearthly beauty with some appalling rows, a marvellous Donizettian mad-scene, and that very unreliable fairy, the irrepressible Puck.

Musical interludes will be sung by Alvarez Young Artists Hamish McLaren (cover Oberon) and Daniel Vening (cover Bottom) accompanied by Jonathan Cole-Swinard.