Classic Ross Amico

Tag: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Dream to Some… A Nightmare to Others!

Even though the solstice was on Sunday, the longest day, a lot of Europeans celebrate the height of the season tonight, St. John’s Eve. For the record, that’s when the demon Chernobog is supposed to emerge from Bald Mountain – regardless of what Disney may think. (The narrator of “Fantasia,” Deems Taylor, says it’s supposed to be Walpurgis Night, April 30, the eve of May Day.)

In England, June 23 is Midsummer’s Eve, the setting of Shakespeare’s most famous comedy. I have a soft spot for the 1935 film version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” overseen by Viennese impresario Max Reinhardt and featuring a real hodgepodge of actors from the Warner Bros. stable, including crooner (and later tough guy) Dick Powell as Lysander, Olivia de Havilland as Hermia, James Cagney as Bottom, and yes, 14-year-old Mickey Rooney as Puck.

But it’s the technical achievement that really puts it over. The opulent film (spun off from an extravagant Hollywood Bowl production) sports an effervescent score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, woven together with dewy gossamer from the compositions of Felix Mendelssohn, enthralling production design and art direction by Anton Grot, with an especially delightful sequence of fairies ascending a woodland mist encircling a tree, and poetic choreography by Branislava Nijinska. There’s so much poetry in this movie it even sustains the ridiculous antlered crown worn by magnificent Victor Jury (soon to play John Wilkerson, the unsavory overseer in “Gone with the Wind”), putting his superior elocution to impressive use as Oberon.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has been filmed many times, of course. (I’m still trying to forget a middle-aged Stanley Tucci as Puck, riding a turtle, from the frustrating 1999 version, also starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Kline.)

One I find especially unpleasant sports perhaps the most impressive pedigree of them all – a 1968 version that stars, among others, Judy Dench, Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg, David Warner, and Ian Holm, in green body paint, as perhaps the creepiest Puck in history. Also, for “Star Wars” aficionados, one-time Annakin Skywalker (before George Lucas scrubbed him out) Sebastian Shaw as Peter Quince. To think, the film is directed by theatrical deity Peter Hall! With such an assemblage of talent, how could it miss?

Well, it *was* 1968, and there were certainly more attractive, more lucid eras. As I recall, the film is uningratiating – ugly and claustrophobic, with hand-held cameras and “Kung Fu Theater” style editing, little concern for the beauty of the language, and perhaps Holm’s only bad performance (with that damn tongue).*

I disliked it so intensely, in fact, that it’s one of those instances in which I feel surely it couldn’t be as bad as I remember. This is the most dangerous kind of bad, because there’s a good chance I will wander back to it, lured beyond my will by curiosity and fey enchantment.

I must say, at least the print at the link is in the best resolution I have ever seen. I’m used to encountering it in transfers from grainy VHS. Here it is. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Then check out the 1935 version, for the production, especially. It really is like a dream. Perhaps it won’t hit you the same way it does me, but I find it to be pure enchantment. Here’s a taste.

It’s unfortunate I couldn’t find a crisper transfer.

Americans might question why Midsummer would fall at the beginning of the season. Traditionally, in much of Europe, summer began on May Day. Under the Julian calendar, the calendar employed the Roman Empire that traveled to Anglo-Saxon England, summer began on May 9. So Midsummer is June 24.

Yeah, they got it wrong, but when in Rome…

Happy Midsummer Night!

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*EDIT: Okay, maybe I went too far in my savaging of the 1968 version with “little concern for the beauty of the language.” This is one cleanly-articulated text. I’ve been noticing of late how nobody these days enunciates. So the readings were actually quite refreshing. The problems (the rapid-fire delivery and disruptive editing) don’t really kick in until the fairies show up. Holm must have had a thermos of coffee and a kilo of cocaine every morning on the way to the shoot. It’s still an ugly movie, but if you just listen to the words, it’s actually quite good. And of course, you can’t dismiss it out hand with that cast!

June 23, 2026
Erich Wolfgang Korngold on “Picture Perfect”

May 29 marks the birthday of one of my favorite composers: Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). Thanks to a steady diet of Errol Flynn films, Korngold will forever be a part of the soundtrack to my life.

Korngold went from being one of Europe’s most astounding musical prodigies – his works admired by Mahler, Strauss and Puccini, and championed by Schnabel, Weingartner and Klemperer – to becoming one of Hollywood’s transformative film composers. He is a link from Old World opulence to New World fantasy, his music gracing a number of Warner Brothers’ classic historical adventures.

The best ones starred Flynn, and this week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear music from “The Sea Hawk” (1940) and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), as well as the mostly forgotten “Another Dawn” (1937). Flynn stars alongside Kay Francis and Ian Hunter (who would go on to play Richard the Lionheart in “Robin Hood”) in this love triangle involving pilots in a British desert colony.

The film may be an obscurity to all save classic movie buffs, but Korngold thought enough of his music that he salvaged the main title as the opening theme of his Violin Concerto, premiered by Heifetz in 1947.

It was an invitation from theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt that brought Korngold to Hollywood in the first place, for a cinematic adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935). The film stars James Cagney, Dick Powell and Olivia de Havilland, in her big screen debut, with Mickey Rooney an irrepressible Puck.

For the project, Korngold adapted the famous incidental music of Felix Mendelssohn, interweaving material from Mendelssohn’s symphonies and orchestrating some of the “Songs without Words.” Even so, the music bears the composer’s unmistakable stamp, as you’ll hear in the opening number, lifted from the “Scottish Symphony,” but infused with plenty of Korngoldian swagger.

I hope you’ll join me, as the playlist is all-Korngold this week on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Happy birthday, EWK!

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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

May 29, 2026
Weber Operas: 200 Years of “Oberon;” “Der Freischütz” in Concert

In this year of Carl Maria von Weber anniversaries – the influential German composer died 200 years ago (on June 25, 1826, to be exact) – it’s worthwhile to note the bicentennial of his final opera, actually a singspiel (an opera with spoken dialogue), “Oberon,” which was first performed on this date at Covent Garden, a little more than two months before his passing.

Oberon, of course, is king of the fairies, as we all know from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Weber also imports Puck and Titania. But from there James Robinson Planché’s libretto (which George Grove, of Grove Dictionary fame, described as “unmitigated awfulness”) goes its own way. The story combines elements of Christoph Martin Wieland’s German poem “Oberon” and the 13th century French romance “Huon de Bordeaux.”

In Shakespeare, the fairy royals quarrel over the guardianship of an Indian prince (and accusations of infidelity). Here, Oberon refuses to reconcile with his queen until a faithful human couple is found. Puck directs his attention to Huon, a knight of Charlemagne, charged with assassinating the Caliph’s “right-hand man,” who is engaged to marry the Caliph’s daughter, Reiza. In the meantime, Huon and Reiza both have visions that draw them to one another. A number of trials ensue, including shipwreck, abduction by pirates, and enslavement. The plot thickens, though ultimately a happy ending is achieved, thanks to some blasts on Oberon’s magic horn.

Weber’s “Oberon” overture still appears regularly on orchestra programs and of course on classical radio. The delicacy of some of the music anticipates Mendelssohn’s more famous treatment of the fairies. Mendelssohn pays more overt tribute to his predecessor by actually quoting a theme from the Act II finale, “Hark, the mermaids,” in his own “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” overture.

Weber was not enthusiastic about the London production, but the opera was a great success. The first performance elicited many encores. Sadly, the composer died before he could set to work on a revision. Undoubtedly, he would have overseen the translation of text and dialogue to his native tongue (work which would be undertaken posthumously by other hands).

“Oberon” was first performed in the United States later that year – it would be performed at the Metropolitan Opera between 1918 and 1921 – but if it’s encountered at all now, it’s often as a concert performance, bypassing the requirements of elaborate staging or scenery.

Here’s a performance of the overture from an electric concert given in Tokyo by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in 1970. Szell was fatally ill with cancer (it was his final concert), but you would never know it from what he was able to draw from his players. Their performance of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2, on the same program, was especially stunning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFE0tcRDtm8

Here it is, given the Franz Liszt treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyWGTWuBZww

And as an arrangement for guitar quartet by Anthony Burgess (author of “A Clockwork Orange”), who was something of a composer himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYetHoiCv9M

Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s “Fantasy on Oberon’s Magic Horn”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aKwy4BLekw

Act II Mermaids’ chorus, transcribed by Charles-Valentin Alkan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAbgs0osOac

A complete recording of the opera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rht8LHy2C4Q

A staged production (which I have yet to watch)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImXedOZXqhw

Weber’s most influential opera, of course, was “Der Freischütz” (“The Free-Shooter”), of 1821. With its pact with the devil, magic bullets, and lurid Wolf’s Glen sequence, replete with thunder and lightning, withered trees, skulls, and apparitions, it set the prototype for a more extreme branch of German Romantic opera. The work was a great favorite of Hector Berlioz.

Interestingly, Berlioz’s sympathetic arrangement of “Der Freischütz,” undertaken to meet the requirements for Parisian performance – including adaptation of spoken dialogue to recitative and orchestration of Weber’s piano piece “Invitation to the Dance” for use as a ballet (de rigueur in Paris) – will be presented in concert at Carnegie Hall this Thursday by vocal soloists and the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein. I’ve already got my ticket – and I didn’t have to barter my soul to Samiel!

https://americansymphony.org/2025-2026/der-freischutz/

More about Weber, at the very least on June 25, for the bicentennial of his passing…

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PAINTING: “Oberon and the Mermaid” (1883), by Sir Joseph Noel Paton

April 12, 2026
Shakespeare’s First Folio 400th & Music

2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the so-called First Folio, a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, published seven years after the author’s death and considered to be one of the most influential books ever issued.

Although not quite on the same level of significance, this Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll devote an hour to music inspired by the Bard – a topic which, of course, could fill many years of such programs – in observation of William Shakespeare’s birthday.

First, fairy high jinks are a metaphor for the mutability and volatility of the human heart in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” We’ll hear two works inspired by Shakespeare’s pixilated comedy.

English composer Walter Leigh (1905-1942) was killed in action during the Second World War, just shy of his 37th birthday. Like Paul Hindemith, who was his teacher for two years, Leigh thrived on writing music made to order for specific occasions. His incidental music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” first played in open air in 1936, sounds like a throwback to the Restoration period.

Italian-born composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) fled fascism in Europe to settle in California. There, he wrote concertos for Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky and Andrés Segovia. He is particularly well-regarded for his guitar music, having composed nearly 100 works for the instrument. He also worked on about 200 film scores. As a teacher, his students included André Previn, Nelson Riddle, Herman Stein, Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams.

Over the course of his career, Castelnuovo-Tedesco churned out an extraordinary amount of music inspired by the Bard. He composed an opera after “The Taming of the Shrew,” four dances for “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” 33 Shakespeare songs drawn from the plays, and settings of 35 of the sonnets.

Between 1930 and 1953, he wrote a number of overtures on Shakespearean themes – at least 11, enough to fill two compact discs, which have been issued on the Naxos label. His overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” dates from 1940.

Czech composer Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859-1951) lived a very long life, during which he witnessed, firsthand, many remarkable events in music history. Born in Prague, Foerster worked as a critic in Hamburg, then moved to Vienna, where he became closely acquainted with Gustav Mahler.

Although he occasionally employed in his works musical inflections of his native land, he wasn’t truly part of the Czech nationalist school embraced by Dvořák and others. Because his music is not as overtly Czech-sounding as some, and because he spent so much of his early career in Germany and Austria, Foerster’s output and reputation were embraced only gradually by his countrymen.

He returned to Prague in 1918, with the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, and found employment there at both the conservatory and university. Gradually, he attained the status of “grand old man” of Czech music.

He composed his symphonic suite “From Shakespeare” in 1909. Made up of four portraits of prominent female characters from Shakespeare plays, the work consists of a brief introduction, followed by musical meditations on Perdita (from “The Winter’s Tale”), Viola (from “Twelfth Night”), Lady Macbeth (from – well, you know), and finally, Katherina, Petruchio and Eros (from “The Taming of the Shrew”).

I’ll provide the whipped cream and maraschino cherries. Bring your own straws for “Great Shakes” – celebrating William Shakespeare and 400 years of the First Folio – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 23, 2023
Cool Classical Music for Hot Summer Days

It’s going to be another hot one! Before air conditioning, one struck out for the country, hit the local watering hole, or staggered to the shade of the nearest grove. The 17 year-old Felix Mendelssohn composed his overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” while secluding himself in the family garden. The work was completed on this date in 1826.

Join me this afternoon as we seek relief with music inspired by gardens, fountains, and forests. We’ll think cooling thoughts, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

August 6, 2018

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