A Student at the Opera: A Midsummer Night's Dream at the English National Opera

I have officially been to the opera for the first time.

Having gone nearly 23 years without ever having been to an opera, the offer of low-rate nosebleed seats at the English National Opera was too good an opportunity to pass up. Having never been to the opera before, I had my qualms: would I enjoy it? would I understand it? would I even be able to hear the words properly? I'm not musical in any sense of the word, so what if I didn't understand the features of the score? Wasn't the opera just for snobs anyway? 

So I decided to buy tickets for A Midsummer Night's Dream, a story I already love and know well. I figured, having studied the text at university and having seen the play live at Drum Castle one summer, I had the strongest chance of getting to grips with opera through it. And so, cheap tickets bought, off to the opera.

Promo image for A Midsummer Night's Dream at the English National Opera

As we took our seats in the nosebleeds and the show opened, I immediately thought I had made a grave error. On came Tytania and Oberon, whose performance was beautiful but also so close to exactly what I feared opera might be - overly designed and serious, technically excellent but without anything truly entertaining. That was until Puck appeared (and later, the Mechanicals) and his tumbles and acrobatics across the stage, through the London Coliseum, and amongst the audience took the edge off the seriousness of the performance. Latterly, the humour of the Mechanicals in their performance of Pyramus and Thisbe and the transformation of Bottom into a donkey-man retains the bawdy humour of Shakespeare's original work without sacrificing the technical beauty of the opera's music or stage design.

Since I know so little about the technicalities of music, I can't comment on the musical prowess of the show itself. What I can comment on is the inventive set design throughout the entire runtime. A large, slanting stage fills the space and is used as both an enormous bed, a space upon which numerous beds are left, a neutral space evocative of the forest in which the play takes place, and a stage upon which the Mechanicals perform their play for the lovers at the end of the play. 

The initial employment of the stage as an enormous bed upon which the action of the play takes place suggests that the act of performance is equal to the act of dreaming, an unreality in which we can work out the concerns or desires of our unconscious mind. With the activity taking place under the manipulation of a fairy kingdom, the actions of the lovers and the Mechanicals throughout the play are, in a sense, at remove from reality through magical intervention - as well as literally removed from society, with their action taking place in the woods.

Oberon watches over Helena and Demetrius as he plots his manipulations of the lovers,
stood on an enormous bed for a stage (Photo by Robert Workman)

It also underlines that, at its core, the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream is all about the bedroom and the relationships and low humour that occur within it. More boisterously funny than I thought an opera had any right to be, A Midsummer Night's Dream revels in lewd humour throughout, which function as the perfect relief to the seriousness of the overall production.

Will I try the opera again? I'm not sure. Whilst I enjoyed this one marvellously, this was largely because it poked fun at itself and found relief from the overall seriousness of opera as a whole. I still have reservations about a more serious opera, and certainly if I don't already know the rough shape of the story. That said, I'd wholly recommend anyone try and nab a cheap seat at A Midsummer Night's Dream.