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Shakespeare's comic fantasy "A Midsummer Night's Dream" inspired 17-year-old Felix Mendelssohn to write a brilliant overture to accompany the play he adored. The composer seamlessly followed that up decades later with a masterful collection of incidental music.
The Shakespeare/Mendelssohn connection is a famous example of one genius inspiring another, and its fruition gets a clever tweak this weekend when the Utah Symphony performs Mendelssohn's "Midsummer" music accompanied by passages from the play.
Puckish octogenarian Fred Adams, co-founder of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, said the evening will allow adults to reconnect with the magic of their youthful fantasies.
Guest conductor Nicholas McGegan's choice to follow Mendelssohn's descriptive pieces with the Shakespearean passages that inspired them is a smart one, said Adams, who will portray the mischievous fairy Puck.
"[The actors] don't steal anything from the score, but we travel in Mendelssohn's mind so the audience can hear what he heard in each of the segments," Adams said. "It allows the music to be the focal point."
Shakespeare's words will regain primacy this summer when Utah Shakespeare Festival performs "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for its 50th-anniversary season in Cedar City.
This weekend, Adams will be fronting the Utah Symphony on the Abravanel Hall stage alongside USF artistic directors Brian Vaughn and David Ivers, and actor Kymberly Mellon, a theater professor at Brigham Young University. The Shakespearean dynamos will narrate the play's plot and recite passages in character between instrumental selections.
Shakespeare used language to create three separate worlds within "A Midsummer Night's Dream" — an aristocratic court, a society of rural bumpkins and a magical realm inhabited by fairies.
"Mendelssohn's score captures all three of those worlds," said Vaughn, who is drawn especially to the fantasy world Shakespeare and Mendelssohn invoke. He will set that magical scene in listeners' minds when he recites lines written for the fairy king Oberon:
I know a bank were the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk roses and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night.
Besides writing music meant to underscore or intersperse the play's scenes, Mendelssohn set some of its passages to music. The songs "You Spotted Snakes" and "Through This House Give Glimm'ring Light" will be sung by the women of the Utah Symphony Chorus and Utah Opera Resident Artists Angela Theis (soprano) and Kate Tombaugh (mezzo-soprano). Their presence provides a tie-in with Utah Symphony | Utah Opera's ongoing Women's Voices Festival.
Utah Opera chorus-master Susanne Sheston said the singers represent fairies weaving a charm of protection around their sleeping queen with these words:
You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blindworms, do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy Queen.
Mendelssohn's music paints a fanciful aural picture as it hisses, buzzes and chirps for each of Shakespeare's creepy creatures.
The overriding message of the play can be summed up as: "Love makes people do crazy things." Or, as Puck puts it: "What fools these mortals be!"
McGegan's unusual concept for performing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with the orchestra in a starring role supplemented by actors follows countless adaptations of the work over the past 400 years, by everyone from Henry Purcell to Marius Petipa to Woody Allen.
McGegan, who conducts San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, is known for attention to historical detail in his performances and deep knowledge of 18th-century performance practice. He should be right at home conducting Haydn's Symphony No. 59 and Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks," which are also on the program.
A midwinter 'Dream'
Narrators from the Utah Shakespeare Festival will join the Utah Symphony and guest conductor Nicholas McGegan for a journey through Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Haydn's Symphony No. 59 in A Major and Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks" are also on the program.
With • USF founder Fred Adams, artistic directors Brian Vaughn and David Ivers, and regular USF performer Kymberly Mellen; soprano Angela Theis and mezzo-soprano Kate Tombaugh; and the women of the Utah Symphony Chorus.
When • Feb. 25 and 26 at 8 p.m.
Where • Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City.
Tickets • Start at $15 (student discounts available); at 801-355-ARTS or http://www.usuo.org. Season ticket holders and those desiring group discounts should call 801-533-NOTE. Prices increase $5 on performance day.