[NEohioPAL] Oberlin Opera Theater to Stage A Midsummer Night's Dream Nov. 14-18
Marci Janas
Marci.Janas at oberlin.edu
Wed Oct 17 12:42:34 PDT 2007
OBERLIN Opera Theater News
Oberlin Conservatory of Music • Office of Public Relations • 39 West
College Street • Oberlin OH 44074-1576
Phone 440-775-8328 • Fax 440-775-5457 • CTS Box Office 440-775-8169
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
MEDIA CONTACT: Marci Janas
October 17, 2007
440-775-8328 or marci.janas at oberlin.edu
A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Autumn, at Oberlin:
Benjamin Britten’s Opera will be Staged by Oberlin Opera Theater
November 14-18
Complimentary Media Tickets: 440-775-8328
Limited Seating Available for Weekend Performances
Call Oberlin College’s Central Ticket Service at 440-775-8169
OBERLIN, OHIO (October 17, 2007) — Since it opened on the British
stage in 1960, Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a feast
for the senses and a deliciously wicked comedy, has captivated opera
lovers. The Oberlin production of this magnificent opera opens on
Wednesday, November 14, at 8 p.m. in Oberlin College’s Hall
Auditorium, located at 67 N. Main Street on Route 58, between the
Oberlin Inn and the Allen Memorial Art Museum. With a libretto
adapted from Shakespeare’s play by Britten and Peter Pears, the
opera, sung in English, is in three acts with two intermissions.
The Oberlin Chamber Orchestra will perform under the direction of
Bridget-Michaele Reischl, Music Director of the Oberlin Orchestras
and Associate Professor of Conducting. Stage direction will be by
Jonathon Field, Associate Professor of Opera Theater and Director of
Opera Theater Productions at Oberlin.
A special treat for audiences will be the appearance of 10 children
from the Oberlin Choristers, who will sing and perform as fairies in
the opera’s magical wood. The Oberlin Choristers is a community-based
choral program for children who are in pre-school through the 12th
grade. The youngsters were prepared for their operatic debut by
Katherine Plank, Founder and Artistic Director of the ensemble.
Performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are at 8 p.m. on Wednesday,
Friday, and Saturday, November 14, 16, and 17; with a 2 p.m. matinee
on Sunday, November 18. Tickets are $5 for all students; $8 for
Oberlin College faculty, staff, alumni, parents, area educators, and
seniors; and $12 for the general public. All seats are reserved.
Tickets are $3 more when purchased at the door. Call Oberlin’s
Central Ticket Service, located in the lobby of Hall Auditorium, at
440-775-8169 or 800-371-0178. Box office hours are from noon to 5
p.m., Monday through Friday and select Saturdays. Hall Auditorium is
wheelchair accessible, and hearing enhancement is available upon
request. Free parking is available throughout the campus.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is sponsored by the Oberlin Conservatory of
Music’s Opera Theater program through generous support from the Louis
C. Sudler Fund. It is produced by arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes,
Inc., publisher and copyright owner, in cooperation with the Oberlin
College Theater and Dance Program.
Synopsis and Director’s Notes
Benjamin Britten has transformed Shakespeare’s play about the madness
of love into a sprightly, comic opera flush with fairies. Oberon,
King of the Fairies, has quarreled with his wife, Queen Tytania, in a
wood near Athens. He sends his spirit attendant, Puck, on an errand:
find the magical herb, the juice of which, when dropped on a sleeping
person’s eyelids, causes her to fall in love with the next live
creature she sees. Lovers requited but thwarted (Lysander and Hermia)
and unrequited (Demetrius and Helena)—not to mention a group of
amateur thespians, including one put-upon weaver named Bottom—
populate this enchanted world, and the magic plant that Puck has
found is employed to confusing and comical effect.
“Britten is brilliant with word and picture ‘painting’ in this opera,
with its timeless magic,” says Bridget-Michaele Reischl. “Faithful to
Shakespeare in the storytelling, Britten musically pays subtle homage
to the Renaissance and baroque styles of music. He uses a
harpsichord, harp, and metallic percussion instruments—with few
strings or winds, all of which create a magical fairy quality. As the
worlds of royalty and fairies collide in the story, the orchestration
perfectly exhibits the magic. Talk about a ‘feel-good’ opera!”
Reischl is enthused about the uniquely small orchestra of 20 student
musicians who will perform in the opera. “This is an intimate playing
experience and as close to a chamber ensemble as it gets,” she says.
Performers and Production Team
This production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream features Oberlin
Conservatory students. Some of them are double-cast in the principal
roles and alternate performances; one cast appears on Wednesday and
Saturday, and the other on Friday and Sunday. The Fairies include
King Oberon (Nathan Medley ’09), Queen Tytania (Olivia Savage ’08,
Jenna Hall ’08), Puck (Amy O’Callaghan ’08), Cobweb (Caitlin Bell
’10), Peaseblossom (Laura Estrada ’08), Mustardseed (Melanie Emig
’09), and Moth (Meris Gadaleto ’10). The Lovers include Helena
(Sophie Wingland ’08, Tiffany Marx ’08), Hermia (Kimiko Glynn ’08,
Jordan Roberts ’09), Lysander (Benjamin von Reiche ’10, Joseph Turro
’09), Demetrius (Jeffrey Hill ’08, Evan Bennett ’08), Theseus (Joseph
Lattanzi ’10), and Hippolyta (Maureen Sutliff ’08). The Mechanicals
include Bottom (Joseph Barron ’08), Flute (Chad Grossman ‘10), Snout
(Elias Traverse ’08), Starveling (Colin Levin ’08), Quince (Jason Eck
’08), and Snug (Douglas Balkin ’09). Servants are performed by
Kjirsti Petersen Foutz ’08 and Mark Tempesta ’09. Children from the
Oberlin Choristers appear as the Chorus.
The Oberlin production team of professional staff includes Alan
Montgomery, assistant music director; Howard Lubin, musical
preparation; Katherine Plank, choir director; Michael Louis Grube,
managing director and set designer; Holly Handman-Lopez,
choreographer; Copeland Woodruff, assistant director and stage
manager; Jeremy K. Benjamin, lighting designer; Chris Flaharty,
costume designer; JoEllen Cuthbertson, costumer; Daniel Michalak,
rehearsal accompanist; Joseph P. Natt, technical director; Andrew
Kaletta, master electrician; David Bugher, assistant technical
director; Chris Haff-Paluck, orchestral manager and librarian; and
Robert Katkowsky is properties master. Jayson Greenberg ‘09 is
student assistant stage manager.
Benjamin Britten
Born in Suffolk, England, in 1913, Benjamin Britten began composing
at the age of seven. He studied at the Royal College of Music in
London, writing the first compositions that would win him acclaim—the
Sinfonietta, Op. 1, and A Boy was Born—in 1934. The following year he
met poet W.H. Auden, with whom he collaborated on Our Hunting
Fathers, a song-cycle for soprano and orchestra. In 1936, Britten met
tenor Peter Pears, with whom he began a musical collaboration and
personal partnership that would last for the rest of his life.
In 1939, Britten and Pears followed W.H. Auden to America, where
Britten composed Paul Bunyan, his first opera. He also wrote other
important works, such as the orchestral Sinfonia da Requiem.
Conscientious objectors during World War II, Britten and Pears
returned to England in 1942, and Britten began composing an opera,
Peter Grimes, which would catapult him to prominence as the pre-
eminent composer of his generation. The duo increasingly became an
important part of post-war Britain’s cultural life, helping to found
the English Opera Group in 1946. Britten was celebrated not only as a
composer, but also as an accompanist and an authoritative conductor.
His interpretations of Mozart were highly esteemed.
Following Grimes, Britten wrote other operas, including Billy Budd
and Turn of the Screw. He later became interested in the music of the
East, as well as in Japanese Noh plays. Then, in 1959, Britten began
to compose a full-evening opera for the reopening of the Jubilee Hall
in Aldeburgh. With little time to create a new libretto, he and Pears
adapted A Midsummer Night’s Dream from Shakespeare’s play. What
resulted was one of the most successful and faithful operatic
adaptations of a Shakespearean play that has ever been produced. Said
Britten about the element of fantasy in the play and opera: “The
Fairies are very different from the innocent nothings that often
appear in productions. I have always been struck by a kind of
sharpness in Shakespeare’s fairies …they are the guards to Tytania,
so they have in places martial music.”
With dynamic action between the different groups of characters, and
the richly woven tapestry of keyboards and percussion representing
the fairy world, warm strings for the lovers, and bright, percussive
harps, A Midsummer Night’s Dream became the most beguiling of
Britten’s operas. Its timeless humor and fairy enchantment make it a
spellbinding masterpiece.
Note: This biographical information was gathered from The Britten-
Pears Foundation (www.brittenpears.org).
Bridget-Michaele Reischl
Bridget-Michaele is Music Director of the Oberlin Orchestras and
Associate Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory of
Music. In 2005-06, she led the Oberlin Conservatory Symphony
Orchestra on a concert tour of China. Since becoming the first
American to win Italy’s Antonio Pedrotti International Conducting
Competition in 1995, she has been an active guest conductor
throughout the United States and internationally, appearing with such
orchestras as the Atlanta and Milwaukee symphonies and the Brooklyn
Philharmonic. Reischl is also music director of the Green Bay
Symphony Orchestra in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a position she has held
since 2001. From 1992 to 2004, she was Music Director of the Lawrence
Symphony Orchestra and Associate Professor of Conducting at the
Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wisconsin. She
is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. As a student of Robert
Spano (a 1983 Oberlin graduate), she continued her studies as a
conducting fellow at both the Aspen and the Tanglewood music
festivals, where she worked with Seiji Ozawa, Murray Sidlin, and
David Zinman (also an Oberlin graduate, Class of 1958). She has
recorded on the Velut Luna, CRI, and Sea Breeze Record Company
labels. Reischl is scheduled to record a new release of Debussy and
Takemitsu on the Telarc label with the internationally acclaimed
harpist, Yolanda Kondonassis (Oberlin Assistant Professor of Harp),
in January 2008. She will return to Italy in the summer of 2008 to
conduct Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro as part of the “Oberlin in Italy”
program.
Jonathon Field is one of America’s more versatile and popular stage
directors, having directed more than 100 productions in all four
corners of the United States. He served as Artistic Director of Lyric
Opera Cleveland for six seasons, where he presented the operas of
Mozart, Rossini, and Donizetti as well as the Ohio premieres of works
by John Adams, Mark Adamo, and Philip Glass. Field’s productions for
the Lyric Opera of Chicago, among them Trouble in Tahiti, Gianni
Schicchi, The Old Maid and the Thief and The Spanish Hour, were so
successful they were repeated at the Illinois Humanities Festival
with Stephen Sondheim as keynote speaker. His productions of La
Cenerentola and Die Fledermaus for San Francisco Opera’s Western
Opera Theatre played in more than 20 states, as has an updated
version of La Bohème for Seattle Opera. In addition to the standard
Italian and German repertoire, he has directed Eugene Onegin and
Boris Godunov in the original Russian in San Francisco; he had a
great critical success there as well with Prokofiev’s The Love for
Three Oranges. Over the past eight years Field has directed 10
productions with the Arizona Opera, being deemed by the press “their
most perceptive stage director,” and working there with such esteemed
artists as Teresa Zylis-Gara, Jerome Hines, Pablo Elvira, Giorgio
Tozzi, and Angelina Reux.
Field’s versatility extends from the avant garde to musical comedies.
He successfully introduced computer-generated scenery to the world of
opera in a recent San Francisco production of Candide that the press
called “virtual Voltaire—the backgrounds are as varied as the story.”
His pioneering use of video-projected scenery in productions of The
Turn of the Screw, Tales of Hoffmann, and Der Freischütz has elicited
praise from audience and critics alike. In the realm of operetta and
musicals he has staged H.M.S. Pinafore for Opera Omaha, Trial by Jury
for Lake George Opera, Bernstein’s Wonderful Town in Chicago, and
Merry Widow and Countess Maritza in San Francisco. For the Oakland
Symphony he translated and choreographed Stravinsky’s Pulcinella
using members of the Oakland Ballet. He has worked on several world
premieres, most notably assisting Robert Altman with Bolcom’s
McTeague at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and David Alden with Susa’s
The Love of Don Perlimplin with San Francisco Opera. He has also
worked as Assistant Director for several of Seattle Opera’s Wagner
Ring cycles, and he has served in an administrative capacity with
many opera companies and festivals. In February 2007, Field directed—
at Oberlin and at Miller Theatre in New York City—the U.S. premiere
of Lost Highway, the dramatic music theater work by noted Austrian
composer Olga Neuwirth based on the David Lynch film. The opera
received critical acclaim from the New York Times and
musicalamerica.com, which made special reference to Field’s direction.
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated amid
the intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the
oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. The
Conservatory is renowned internationally as a professional music
school of the highest caliber and has been pronounced a “national
treasure” by the Washington Post. Oberlin’s alumni have gone on to
achieve illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious music
world. Many of them have attained stature as solo performers,
composers, and conductors, among them Jennifer Koh, Steven Isserlis,
Denyce Graves, Franco Farina, Christopher Robertson, Lisa Saffer,
George Walker, Christopher Rouse, David Zinman, and Robert Spano. All
of the members of the contemporary sextet eighth blackbird, most of
the members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, and many of
the members of Apollo’s Fire are Oberlin alumni. In chamber music,
the Miró, Pacifica, Juillard, and Fry Street quartets, among other
small ensembles, include Oberlin-trained musicians, who also can be
found in major orchestras and opera companies throughout the world.
For more information about Oberlin, please visit www.oberlin.edu/con.
Oberlin Opera Theater
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
By Benjamin Britten
Libretto by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears,
based on the play by William Shakespeare
Bridget-Michaele Reichl, conductor of the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra
Jonathon Field, stage director
Wednesday, November 14, At 8 P.M.
Friday, November 16, At 8 P.M.
Saturday, November 17, At 8 P.M.
Sunday, November 18, At 2 P.M.
Reserved seating tickets:
$5 All Students
$8 Oberlin College ID
$8 Educators
$8 Seniors
$12 Public
All tickets $3 more when purchased at the door
Central Ticket Service
440-775-8169 or 800-371-0178
Located in the lobby of Hall Auditorium.
Open Noon to 5 p.m.
Monday—Friday
Hall Auditorium
Hall Auditorium, 67 N. Main Street on
Route 58, between the Oberlin Inn and
the Allen Memorial Art Museum.
Free Parking.
# # #
Media Contact:
Marci Janas
440-775-8328
marci.janas at oberlin.edu
www.oberlin.edu/con
www.oberlin.edu/~events
www.oberlin.edu/operathe
10/17/07 ms
Marci Janas
Director of Conservatory Media Relations
Oberlin Conservatory of Music
39 West College Street
Oberlin, OH 44074
www.oberlin.edu/con
(P) 440.775.8328
(F) 440.775.5457
marci.janas at oberlin.edu
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