Lenox, Ma.(North America)(A Midsummer Night's Dream)(Opera Review)

There was a genuine full moon over Tanglewood in late July for the first of two performances of Benjamin Britten's 1960 A Midsummer Night's Dream. If ever proof were needed for the idea that a perfectly wonderful opera experience demands neither star power nor a fancy mise-en-scene, this production by the Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra (i.e., all young musicians and students), directed by David Kneuss, conducted by Stefan Asbury and designed by John Michael Deegan and Sarah G. Conly, would satisfy the most jaded sophisticate.

Britten wrote his opera for the rebuilt Jubilee Hall (seating capacity 350) at Aldeburgh, where it received its premiere in 1960. The Tanglewood Theater holds a slightly larger audience, but the performance gave all the pleasures of a chamber event, even though Britten's music calls for a full orchestra. Intimacy was one key to the evening's success. Everything and everyone was visible and, more important, audible; there was no strain on the part of the young singers, and the musicians under Asbury's baton brought out all of Britten's masterful, evocative orchestration. The sheer variety of sounds--vibraphone and flute, harpsichord and harp, odd percussions, all those string glissandos--not to mention the variety of musical and vocal styles for the three sets of characters (fairies, mortal lovers, "rude mechanicals") gives the opera depth and complexity at some points and easy accessibility at others. The rich strings at the opening of Act II, complemented by winds and keyboard, took on a deep resonance.

The curtain rose on black bleachers that stretched across the length of the stage, behind which a full moon shone. This was the set, along with two sliding platforms ...