The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta. Michael White

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СКАЧАТЬ Synopsis of the Plot

      Setting: A wood near Athens and Theseus’ palace

      ACT I Oberon and Titania have quarrelled over the possession of an Indian boy stolen by the fairies. Oberon plots revenge and instructs Puck to fetch the magic herb which, squeezed into the eyes, will make the recipient fall instantly in love with the next person they see. Oberon also plans to use the magic herb to help Helena, in love with Demetrius, who has eyes only for Hermia. Puck, however, confuses Demetrius with the sleeping Lysander, so that when he wakes and sees Helena, Lysander falls instantly in love with her (and out of love with Hermia), and chases after her, leaving a bewildered Hermia alone and frightened.

      ACT II The Athenian craftsmen are rehearsing a play, their contribution to the duke’s forthcoming wedding celebrations. Titania, asleep nearby, awakes to see Bottom, whom Puck has disguised with an ass’ head on his shoulders, and falls immediately in love with him. Oberon is delighted with Puck’s mischief-making – until he sees that Puck has squeezed the juice into Lysander’s eyes by mistake. He makes amends by administering the juice himself to Demetrius, but now both men are in love with Helena; Helena and Hermia quarrel and the men decide to fight a duel. Exasperated, Oberon orders Puck to ensure that the men come to no harm and that the four lovers are appropriately reconciled.

      ACT III Oberon now possesses the Indian boy, the cause of his quarrel with Titania, so he releases both Titania and Bottom from the spell. The four lovers, asleep in the wood, have been suitably positioned so that, on waking, they see the ‘correct’ partner. They make their way, somewhat bemused, to Athens, where the duke gives them his blessing and arranges a joint wedding, alongside his own. The craftsmen perform their tragic play with intense seriousness – but their incompetence and confusion turn it into high farce. At midnight the celebrations stop and the humans retire, leaving the fairies once more to their own world.

       Music and Background

      Britten’s favoured themes of sleep and dreams inspired a score of pure enchantment that creates three distinctive sound-worlds for the three categories of character at large in the wood: lovers, rustics and fairies. The supernatural comes with high voice-types (Oberon is a countertenor, the fairies’ chorus a group of boy trebles) and the delicate accompaniment of harps, keyboards and percussion, while the rustic play-within-a-play of Pyramus and Thisbe is a wicked parody of 19th-century bel canto opera – and especially of the way Joan Sutherland used to sing it!

       Highlights

      Oberon’s exquisitely antique-style aria ‘I know a bank’ in Act I; in Act III the lovers’ quartet, the entire Pyramus and Thisbe Scene, and the final fairy chorus, ‘Now until the break of day’, with its serene and somehow ceremonial rhythmic lilt.

      Did You Know?

      

The libretto is Shakespeare’s own text, cut down by Pears and Britten to roughly half its original length. So skilful is the reduction that they had to invent only one line of new text to cover the joins.

      Recommended Recording

      Alfred Deller, Elizabeth Harwood, Peter Pears, Josephine Veasy, Owen Brannigan, London Symphony Orchestra/Britten. Decca 425 663-2. An unbeatable classic, not least for the spectral artistry of Alfred Deller, who effectively inspired this whole opera.

Peter Grimes

       FORM: Opera in a Prologue and three acts; in English

       COMPOSER: Benjamin Britten (1913–76)

       LIBRETTO: Montague Slater; after the narrative poem by George Crabbe

       FIRST PERFORMANCE: London, 7 June 1945

       Principal Characters

      Peter Grimes, a fisherman

Tenor

      Hobson, a carrier and the village policeman

Bass

      Swallow, a lawyer and village coroner

Bass

      Mrs Sedley, a widow

Mezzo-soprano

      Ellen Orford, a widowed schoolmistress

Soprano

      Auntie, landlady at the Boar Inn

Contralto

      Balstrode, a retired sea captain

Baritone

      Ned Keene, a ‘quack’ chemist

Baritone

       Synopsis of the Plot

      Setting: The Borough, a fishing village on the east coast of England

      PROLOGUE An inquest has been held on the death of Grimes’ apprentice, lost at sea in suspicious circumstances. In spite of the villagers’ doubts, Grimes has been exonerated, but advised not to take another boy.

      ACT I Keene comes to see Grimes to tell him that he has found him another apprentice. Several objections are raised to this and Hobson refuses point-blank to fetch the boy from the workhouse until Ellen Orford, who sympathises with Grimes, agrees to accompany him. As a storm approaches, the villagers retire to the Boar, leaving Grimes alone with Balstrode, who advises the unpopular fisherman to leave the village altogether. In a rare moment of optimism, Grimes confides to Balstrode his hopes of acquiring money, respect from the villagers and, eventually, Ellen Orford as his wife. Later, Grimes joins the villagers in the Boar as the storm lashes around them, but he makes them uneasy. Indeed they become positively angry when Hobson, Ellen and the new boy arrive, soaked and exhausted, and Grimes insists on taking the boy out again immediately.

      ACT II Ellen is disturbed to see a bruise on the boy’s neck and remonstrates with Grimes when he insists, on a Sunday, that the boy must work. Grimes’ response is to hit her, an act grimly noted by the villagers who are, at that moment, emerging from church. Feelings against Grimes are rapidly rising and a deputation is sent to his hut to find out the truth. Hearing the villagers approaching, Grimes hustles the boy out of the hut and on to the cliff path; minutes later he falls to his death.

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