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Oberlin Opera: Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Nov. 10)

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by Daniel Hathaway

It takes supreme self-confidence to turn a Shakespeare comedy into an opera, and even more daring to follow up someone else’s iconic music with a score of your own. Benjamin Britten is one of the few composers who could succeed on both counts. His version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, composed in 1960 and produced by Oberlin Opera Theater earlier this month, preserves the magic of Shakespeare’s verse with atmospheric writing that stands up well to Mendelssohn’s wonderful incidental music. Directed by Jonathon Field, with Christopher Larkin and the Oberlin Orchestra in the Hall Auditorium pit, the production, of which I saw the fourth and final performance on Sunday afternoon, November 10, boasted a uniformly superb cast of Athenians, Fairies, and Rude Mechanicals. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater: 
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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by Mike Telin

When Oberon and Tytania, the King and Queen of the Fairies, have a public marital spat, Oberon sets his sights on revenge with the help of his mischievous servant Puck. Chaos ensues for everyone involved: the fairies, the royalty, and the rag-tag theater troupe. And like any good fairy tale, everything gets worked out in the end. It all makes you wonder — is this someone’s dream?   

On Wednesday, November 6 at 8:00 pm in Hall Auditorium, Oberlin Opera Theater will present Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jonathon Field directs, and Christopher Larkin conducts the Oberlin Orchestra. Performances continue November 8 and 9 at 8:00 pm and the 10th at 2:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“An interesting thing about this piece is the way it’s constructed,” Jonathon Field said during a recent interview. “Shakespeare’s play opens and closes in civilization, so you do feel grounded in our world. But in the opera, it opens and closes in the woods, so the fairies have the first and last word. Britten is almost saying that the irrational and mysterious are going to reign. And that’s where the idea of the dream comes in — that vague difference between reality and illusion.”

[Read more…]

CIM/CWRU, Oberlin, and Baldwin Wallace produce impressive operas during March

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIM/CWRU: Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie

If you were able to shut down your peripheral vision in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on March 1 and focus only on the stage, you could imagine yourself sitting in the stalls at the Paris Opéra in 1757, watching the revival of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater to present Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites

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by Mike Telin

Francis Poulenc’s The Dialogues of the Carmelites recounts a fictionalized version of the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns who, during the closing days of the Reign of Terror, were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce their vocation.

Beginning on Wednesday, March 13 at 8:00 pm in Hall Auditorium, Oberlin Opera Theater will present the first of four performances of Poulenc’s haunting opera. Performances continue on Thursday and Friday at 8:00 and on Sunday at 2:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“It’s a fascinating piece,” director Jonathon Field said during a telephone conversation. “Poulenc’s music is phenomenal and describes the dramatic situation quite well. I think that’s why it keeps getting produced over and over again by opera companies around the world.”

Poulenc’s libretto is based on the play of the same name by Georges Bernanos, based on Gertud von Le Fort’s novella Die Letzte am Schafott (The Last on the Scaffold). [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theatre: “A Salute to Leonard Bernstein” (Nov. 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

On November 7 in Hall Auditorium, Jonathon Field’s Oberlin Opera Theatre celebrated Leonard Bernstein’s centennial year with a professional-quality performance of his one-act opera, Trouble in Tahiti, and a revisiting of some of his Broadway triumphs in excerpts both brilliantly sung and crisply danced. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater presents
“A Salute to Leonard Bernstein”

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by Mike Telin

When Leonard Bernstein wrote his one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti in 1951, Harry Truman was president, unemployment was at 3.3%, and new roads were built to accommodate the increasing numbers of cars. A gallon of gas cost 19 cents, a loaf of bread 16 cents, and a dozen eggs 24 cents. I Love Lucy debuted on television, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland was released in movie theaters, and, the American Dream could only be achieved by moving to the suburbs.

This week, Oberlin Opera Theater will celebrate the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein with a tribute that includes Trouble in Tahiti along with music from his hit Broadway shows West Side Story, Candide, On the Town, and Wonderful Town. Performances take place in Hall Auditorium at 8:00 pm on Wednesday, November 7, Friday, November 9, and Saturday, November 10, and at 2:00 pm on Sunday, November 11. Raphael Jiménez leads the Oberlin Orchestra. Tickets are available online.

“The opera is a social commentary on life in suburbia,” Oberlin Opera Theater Director Jonathon Field said during an interview. Trouble in Tahiti opens with a jazz vocal trio espousing the virtues of living in a little white house in places such as Scarsdale, Highland Park, and Shaker Heights. “They’re singing about what was supposed to be the good life and all the things you were supposed to strive for. But Sam and Dinah discover that in reality, the idyllic 1950s suburban life in America is not all it’s cracked up to be.” [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater: Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (Mar. 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TOS Quint BedroomAre the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel in Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera The Turn of the Screw real, or just the product of the overactive imagination of the young governess who chronicled this “curious story” in her own hand? Stage director Jonathon Field thinks they’re for real.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater to present
Britten’s Turn of the Screw

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Turn of the Screw Score CoverChilling bones since 1898, Henry James’s ghostly novella The Turn of the Screw has inspired movies, plays, ballets, literary reworkings — and a stunning 1954 opera by composer Benjamin Britten and librettist Myfanwy Piper.

Oberlin Opera Theater will bring Britten’s and Piper’s take on the tale to Northeast Ohio this week, turning the stage of Hall Auditorium into the haunted Bly House. Directed by Jonathon Field, conducted by Christopher Larkin, and featuring the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra, performances run at 8:00 pm on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday — March 7, 9, and 10 — and conclude on Sunday, March 11 at 2:00 pm. The Turn of the Screw will be sung in English and include supertitles. Tickets are available here.

The story centers on an unnamed young Governess, who is hired to care for Miles and Flora, the children of Bly House. But two ghosts — the former valet Peter Quint and former governess Miss Jessel — have returned to possess the children.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater: Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (November 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin-Figaro-1What does it take to create a sparkling production of Mozart’s opera buffa The Marriage of Figaro? The music, of course, comes first, and you need a fine group of vocalists to put the composer’s engaging arias and brilliant finales across, a flexible conductor and orchestra in the pit, and a sure hand at the keyboard for recitatives. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater to present
The Marriage of Figaro

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by Mike Telin

figaro_imageA mainstay of the opera repertoire, The Marriage of Figaro is the first of Mozart’s collaborations with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The plot is filled with mistaken identity, surprise paternity, and intrigue, as the servants Figaro and Susanna triumph in marriage while comically thwarting the attempts of the philandering Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna.

Raphael Jiménez will lead the Oberlin Orchestra and cast at 8:00 pm on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, November 1, 3, and 4, and at 2:00 pm on Sunday, November 5 in Hall Auditorium. The opera will be sung in Italian with English supertitles. Click here for ticket information.

Figaro is a social commentary about the lower versus the upper class — servants outsmarting the aristocracy. “The plot of this opera is as current as #metoo,” Oberlin Opera Theater director Jonathon Field said during a recent conversation. “It is about men who are in positions of power and assume that gives them the authority to sleep with whomever, whenever they want to.” [Read more…]

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