It’s an indication of one of modern opera’s most spectacular success stories that the re-issue of this recording from its première 1981 season coincides with the production’s sixth revival, currently showing to sell-out audiences at Glyndebourne, with Peter Hall’s masterpiece of staging now in the hands of original choreographer Lynne Hockney.
The visual quality of the DVD may not be quite the high definition one expects today, especially in the low-lit forest scenes, but the quality of the orchestral performance under Bernard Haitink and of the singers, especially the Oberon of James Bowman, who died in March this year, is exceptional.
Britten’s slippery, shape-shifting glissandi immediately take us into a magical but slightly unnerving land of fairies, played—as they were to be in each subsequent production—by the Trinity Boys Choir.
The ethereal sound of so many treble voices and Bowman’s measured countertenor have a weird, unsettling effect, which is never quite dissipated until the final farcical scene for Curt Appelgren’s Bottom and his players, into which the composer packs so many musical parodies from Donizetti to Bartok, with a bit of Hollywood kitsch in between.
Ileana Cotrubas displays a light, sparkling elegance as Tytania, and the lovers are well-matched and contrasting, with Ryland Davies an ardent Lysander to Dale Duesing’s cool Demetrius, while Felicity Lott as Helena and Cynthia Buchan’s let fly at each other in jealous rage.