A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ballet by G. Balanchine
George Balanchine was making a name for himself in 1960s America by the time he choreographed one of his best-known and most admired ballets, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Based on William Shakespeare’s play of the same name, the ballet makes use of several pieces of music written by the 19th-century German composer, Felix Mendelssohn. This staging of the enduringly popular ballet at Teatro Costanzi in Rome features the illustrious corps de ballet of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, with the theatre's superb orchestra and chorus providing the music.
Balanchine was born in St Petersburg and performed in a previous balletic interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a boy there at the city's famous Mariinsky Theatre. The young performer went on to leave the then Soviet Union to tour Europe and eventually settle in the United States. He choreographed his version of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the New York City Ballet which first performed it on 17 January 1962 at the City Center of Music and Drama in New York.
Mendelssohn's Overture and Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night's Dream are used in full during the ballet. They are Op. 21 and Op. 61 respectively, written by the great composer in 1826 and 1842. Balanchine decided that the two works Mendelssohn wrote for A Midsummer Night's Dream were insufficient for a full-length ballet, so he selected other music written by the maestro and reinterpreted it in new ways. The 1845 overture from Mendelssohn's Athalie, Op. 74, is used, for example, as is an extract from The Fair Melusine, Op. 32, written in 1833.
Balanchine's choreography captures the essence of Shakespeare's play insofar as it continually returns to the theme of love despite the many fantastical notions and quarrels in the story. He makes extensive use of pas de deux to express the various couples’ affections for one another, notably that of Hermia and Lysander. The opening act is full of imbalances, impishness and deceptions but the second act, which opens with Mendelssohn's well-known Wedding March, focuses more on genuine dance partnerships to express love in a more enduring way.
The stage at Teatro Costanzi – in the heart of the Eternal City – is the ideal location for a romantic ballet that speaks of abiding love as this production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream makes abundantly clear to all theatre goers.