A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Album by Benjamin Britten & Alfred Deller & Jennifer Vyvyan & Thomas Hemsley & Marjorie Thomas & April Cantelo & Owen Brannigan & Peter Pears & The English Opera Group Orchestra & Benjamin Britten

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a chamber opera by English composer Benjamin Britten, premiered in 1960. Written in a mid-20th-century idiom, it employs chamber-sized orchestration, a blend of tonal and dissonant harmonies and vivid orchestral colour with careful word-setting to render Shakespearean characters musically, and it is one of Britten's notable stage works from his middle period.
OperaClassical

About

Disc 1

  1. 1.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. Introduction… “Over hill, over dale”
    3:58
  2. 2.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “Oberon is passing… Ill met by moonlight”
    2:56
  3. 3.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “Well, go thy way”
    3:05
  4. 4.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “How now, my love?”
    4:22
  5. 5.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “(Be it on Lion…)… I love thee not”
    3:32
  6. 6.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “Welcome, wanderer!… I know a bank”
    4:31
  7. 7.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “Is all our company here?”
    7:16
  8. 8.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “Fair love, you faint with wand’ring”
    2:36
  9. 9.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “Through the forest I have gone”
    1:47
  10. 10.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “Stay, tho’ thou kill me, sweet Demetrius”
    5:01
  11. 11.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “Come, now a roundal, and a fairy song”
    1:56
  12. 12.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “You spotted snakes”
    2:05
  13. 13.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I. “What thou seest when thou sodt wake”
    2:04
  14. 14.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. Introduction
    2:44
  15. 15.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “Are we all met?”
    7:17
  16. 16.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “I see their knavery”
    3:06
  17. 17.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “Be kind and courteous”
    1:17
  18. 18.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “Hail, mortal, hail”
    4:33
  19. 19.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “I have a reas’nable good ear in music”
    4:16
  20. 20.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “How now, mad spirit”
    2:37

Disc 2

  1. 2.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “Flower ofthe purple dye”
    6:08
  2. 3.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “Puppet? Why so?”
    2:52
  3. 4.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “This is thy negligence”
    2:14
  4. 5.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “Up and down”
    5:36
  5. 6.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II. “On the ground, sleep sound”
    3:00
  6. 7.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. Introduction / “My gentle Robin”
    6:59
  7. 8.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “Helena! ‐ Hermia!”
    4:54
  8. 9.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “When my cue comes, call me”
    3:27
  9. 10.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “Have you sent to Bottom’s house?”
    3:07
  10. 11.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “Orchestral march / “Now, fair Hippolyta”
    6:56
  11. 12.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “If we offend it is with our good will”
    1:07
  12. 13.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show”
    1:09
  13. 14.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “In this same interlude”
    0:57
  14. 15.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “O grim‐look’d night”
    1:45
  15. 16.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans”
    2:21
  16. 17.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “You ladies, you”
    0:41
  17. 18.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “This lanthorn dost the hornèd Moon present”
    1:34
  18. 19.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “Sweet Moon, I thank the for thy sunny beams”
    1:45
  19. 20.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “Asleep my Love? What, dead, my dove?”
    2:33
  20. 21.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “Come, your Bergomask”
    2:31
  21. 22.
    A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act III. “Now the hungry lion roars”
    4:54

Reviews

Similar Releases