Opera Gold in New Cross

Event: Britten's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
Date & Time: 6-7 June 2013, 19:00 - 22:00
Venue: Great Hall, Richard Hoggart Building (New Cross Gate/New Cross Overground)
Price:  £10 full / £5 concessions
Contact: Imogen Burman (i.burman@gold.ac.uk / 020 7919 7645)

Goldsmiths says:

OperaGold is proud to present Benjamin Britten's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', produced and directed by internationally feted soprano Nan Christie (Opera Scotland) and conducted by Tim Hooper. The performance will be staged with a full orchestra, handmade costumes, and a cast comprised of current students and alumni from the Department of Music at Goldsmiths and special guests.

Britten's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was first performed at the reopening of the refurbished Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh in June 1960. With little time to prepare a libretto, Britten chose to adapt it with Peter Pears Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, though as he admitted at the time, he had always admired the original play and was excited by the various levels of action between the different groups of characters.

The opera is completely faithful to the spirit of the original and must be counted as one of the most successful operatic adaptations of a Shakespeare play.

Forming part of PureGold – Goldsmiths’ annual six week music festival - OperaGold stages a major opera in June every year, with rehearsals starting the previous October.

All performances are staged in their original language and aim to make opera more accessible to staff, students and the local community.

Previous productions include Blow's Venus and Adonis (2004); Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (2005); Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (2006); Bizet's Carmen (2007); Britten's Peter Grimes (2008); Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro (2009); Verdi's Rigoletto (2010); Puccini's La Bohème (2011) and Verdi's La Traviata (2012).

To view the full PureGold programme, visit: http://www.gold.ac.uk/puregold/