One of Benjamin Britten’s most inspired scores is finally performed in this country – thanks to the New Zealand School of Music.
Of all Shakespeare’s plays, 
most cries out for music. Over the centuries, many composers have written incidental music for the play, most famously Mendelssohn, but no one until Britten had made an opera of it by setting Shakespeare’s actual words.
“It was a joy setting those heavenly words,” Britten wrote after he’d completed the opera. It is now considered to be one of his most inspired scores, its crystal-like texture containing a wealth of both vocal and orchestral colour. For the audience, it is one of the most instantly appealing of 20th-century operas. Yet until the New Zealand School of Music tackled it last week, it had never been performed in this country.
The school’s team of professional singers – Jenny Wollerman, Margaret Medlyn and Richard Greager – have been working for most of this year with the young performers.
I spoke to Greager about the project a few weeks before the first night. “It has been an ideal piece for us, providing 18 principal parts for all the school’s vocal students at all levels to work on,” he said. “They have seen from the inside what operatic performance is all about. The chamber orchestra, using Britten’s own orchestration with no cuts or alterations, is also almost entirely students from the school, too, with just several professionals playing parts that could not be filled by students.”
Most significantly, it was a fully staged performance with the look of a professional production, running for four nights. The director, Sara Brodie, has a particular flair for breathing life into tight-budget productions. The conductor, Michael Vinten, is NBR New Zealand Opera’s associate conductor and Wellington chorusmaster.
Britten’s writing for the voice, and his setting of the English language, is often compared to that greatest of English composers, Purcell. But was it difficult for the singers? “Difficult but logical,” said Greager, adding (and I guess this comes from his own experience of singing many Britten roles on stage) that “there is an immediate sense of connection between the singers and the audience”.
What was particularly valuable for the student singers was that this is very much “an ensemble opera”, where everyone on stage and in the orchestra is interacting with everyone else. Everyone may be a principal, said Greager, “but it does not rely on star singers”.
“You can’t learn things like this from a book,” he said. And it is clear the school works its students hard, as this was only part of their year’s work. They had to give up their mid-year break to work on the opera.
With its season of this opera, the school has boldly gone where New Zealand Opera fears to tread. But Greager sprang quickly to brush aside any implied criticism, pointing out the need for 18 principal singers that was so valuable to the school would make it very expensive for NZO, which must also always keep an eye on the box office.
Greager had an eye on his box office, too; he “couldn’t possibly tell me” what the budget was, but while referring to the generous backing of Victoria and Massey universities, he made it clear money was tight. But as well as being a showcase for the singers, the production would reflect positively on the school itself.
He was sure this cast had several “singers who are going to go places”. Names we might watch out for included Bryony Williams and Bianca Andrew.
But the main value of a production like this was the experience for all who took part. “They will learn to work professionally, and it will be part of a progression that takes them from here, then hopefully to New Zealand Opera, then on to work in Australia and from there on to either Europe or America.”
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, New Zealand School of Music students and opera orchestra, Memorial Theatre, Victoria University, Wellington, August 3-9.