WORMSLEY ESTATE, U.K. — Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its intimate forest setting, is the perfect summer-festival opera. Based on the Shakespeare play and premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1960, it is also quintessentially English. How fitting to catch it at Garsington Opera, an al fresco enterprise located near High Wickham, between London and Oxford.
Netia Jones’ stylish production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, seen July 2, is one of Garsington’s five presentations this summer, shared with Santa Fe Opera, where it was first mounted in 2021. In both cases, it opened the back of the stage to a breathtaking view, here of the woods, also visible through the theater’s glass sides. Since operas at Garsington begin at 5:05 p.m., the first act was performed in full daylight. For the second act, dark curtains produced a sort of twilight, allowing the stage lights to work.
Jones’ monochrome unit set was starkly modern and steeply raked, its intriguing display mirroring the crash of reality and magic from the opera: a piano smashed up against a large tree, telescopes, a large round screen suggesting the moon and used for projections, and a psychiatrist’s couch. A large array of trap doors opened for the fairies (24 children from the excellent Garsington Youth Opera Company) to pop up as needed. Jones did an admirable job of keeping the story clear and the characters lucid. Her eccentric touches, like Oberon periodically donning a wolf’s head, added to the production’s surreal feeling.
The young lovers, dressed like English schoolkids, were ideally matched, with special honors going to mezzo-soprano Stephanie Wake-Edwards, who sang Hermia with warmth. The rustics (tradesmen putting on a play) were splendid: flawless slapstick meshed with lovely singing all around. As Bottom, Richard Burkhard was a touch less flamboyant than the usual portrayal, but he delighted with his singing, especially in “When my cue comes.” James Way brought just the right comic touch to his portrayal of Flute, dressed in a red ball gown for the Thisbe role in the Mechanicals’ play. His expressive tenor was ideal for the role.
Superstar countertenor Iestyn Davies’ portrayal of Oberon was chilling, played with a dark, merciless edge, his voice crisp and focused. He wore black, contrasting with the white gown and high platinum wig of his Tytania, soprano Lucy Crowe. Her powerful coloratura sound filled the hall, notably in “Come, now a roundel,” the evening’s highlight.
In Britten’s setting, the role of Puck is rhythmically notated but not sung. He is typically acrobatic, as was the case here with Jerone Marsh-Reid, dressed in a green suit. He seemed especially submissive and fearful of Oberon. Baritone Nicholas Crawley sang Theseus, arriving onstage drunk at the opening of the opera. Mezzo-soprano Christine Rice was an excellent Hippolyta.
Two orchestras alternate here. For Midsummer, London’s superb Philharmonia Orchestra was led by Douglas Boyd, Garsington’s music director since 2012 and former principal oboe of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. (The other orchestra, used this season only for Rameau’s Platée, is The English Concert.) Britten wrote distinctly different music for each of the three spheres in the opera (fairies, romantics, rustics) and kept the ensemble relatively small (27 instruments) while bringing along a range of exotic sounds. Boyd and his musicians rendered it all with a brisk clarity.
In a pre-performance interview, Dougie Boyd, as he is universally called, explained how Garsington Opera had emerged so successfully from the pandemic with a full schedule, a large new building complex (the “studios”), and an expanded role in education while many of the UK’s opera companies are in dire situations.
“We’re more like the American model, funded by people who believe in us, with no state subsidy whatsoever,” said Boyd. “Everything flows from the excellence on our stage and the fact that we’re trying to change people’s lives and develop the artists of the future.” He noted that the company fills 98 percent of the 600 seats in its pavilion, an al fresco opera house.
When asked if “English Country House Opera” — with its fancy dress (a majority of the men here were in black tie) and picnics — held a special appeal for wealthy donors, he bristled at the term but suggested that the “whole-day experience, with a long dinner interval and strolling around the grounds” made for a compelling summer visit, “but nothing makes sense if it’s not good onstage.”
Boyd pointed to the company’s special relationship with Santa Fe Opera. Both enjoy spectacular, somewhat remote settings: “They’re kind of a desert version of us.” He pointed to other recent collaborations: “Our Rosenkavalier from two years ago is going to Santa Fe this summer, and their Traviata, directed by Louisa Muller, is coming to Garsington in 2026.”
The period from late July through early August is an ideal time to visit England. The major opera companies and orchestras are finishing up their regular seasons, while summer festivals are already in full swing. Highlights from this visit included a new Ring cycle at the Longborough Festival and an eccentric concert at London’s Wigmore Hall featuring the Camerata RCO, composed of musicians from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, performing an arrangement of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 for 10 musicians (the score includes accordion and piano). The arrangement was written by Rolf Verbeek, who earlier had created a similar arrangement of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony for the same ensemble, available on CD and Spotify. It was an interesting exercise, bringing out the structure of the work with special clarity, but the lack of scale diminished its effect.
Performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream continue until July 19. Garsington Opera’s season, which also includes Rameau’s Platée, Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Verdi’s Un giorno di regno, and Andrew Norman’s A Trip to the Moon, runs through July 31. Further information can be found here. Patrons can reserve a shuttle connecting to the train station at High Wickham, with frequent trains from London and back.
