Britten's Midsummer NIght's Dream

I went to see this at the COC last night.  A few scattered thoughts, as opposed to a full review:

The way in which Britten restructures the play for the opera removes the Athenian frame from the forest; so that instead of the "green world" being a departure from the norm, it is an implicit norm with the Athenian bit - reduced to the play and the fairies' blessing - as a coda.  There's odd references to the Athenian laws and one reference by Theseus to the father, but basically the opera depends on the viewer knowing the play to make sense of the plot involving the couples.

Similarly, the parallels between the actors and the fairies (shadows both) is downplayed. In many ways MSD is an extended meditation in a comic mode on Romeo and Juliet as a play - an expansion of the Queen Mab speech, a parody play of Pyramus and Thisbe, a different sort of family feud, made up more amicably, a continual framing of actions as acted or staged; an arbitrary reversibility of falling in love.  This aspect is largely lost in the opera, except in the play-within-a-play which does meta-parody of Italian opera.

As a rule my tastes in opera are nonstandard - baroque opera, and Mozart, with a jump over the 19th century and then various bits of 20th century opera (Dialogues des Carmelites, Ricard Strauss, Vaughan Williams' Sir John in Love). I liked the Britten, with its resolute avoidance of show-stopping arias and its use of music to provide a continuous texture for the action.

It is also interesting to note how Britten's use of Puck as an acrobat -- inspired, I gather, by some Swedish acrobats -- anticipates the Peter Brook staging of the play.