A Midsummer Night's Dream (Opera)

About

A Midsummer Night's Dream is an opera with music by English composer Benjamin Britten with a libretto based upon William Shakespeare's play of the same name. The play has always been a favorite source of inspiration for composers and Britten was the first to bring the play into the operatic repertoire. Although the work avoids much of the dissonance and atonality employed many composers in Western music, Britten's opera does much to use tones to create worlds of sound that not only perfectly compliment Shakespeare's chimerical play. His music not only creates an effective world of fantasy, but helps the listener delve deeper into the psychological connotations laid out by Shakespeare throughout the play. Although the opera received mixed critical reviews when it premiered, it has been revived as of late and is considered to be a masterpiece of English operatic literature.