Cynthia Greenwood

William Shakespeare is undoubtedly the world's greatest dramatist - is it any wonder myriad opera composers have turned to his works for inspiration? Cynthia Greenwood goes back to the Shakespearean roots of Berlioz's Beatrice and Benedict and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Shakespeare’s plays have inspired more than 200 operas, and it is not surprising that much of the opera canon is indebted to the poetry and humanism of the poet and player from Stratford-upon-Avon. Composers from Rossini to Vaughan -Williams have been captivated by Shakespeare’s complex and universal portraits and their puzzling ambiguity; the grand soliloquies uttered by kings, villains and fools; the multiplicity of viewpoints that belie a single authorial voice; and the multi-layered plots that evoke the ironic, the comic and the tragic within a single work.

In particular, Hector Berlioz and Benjamin Britten, who helped define the operatic sensibilities of their respective centuries, revered Shakespeare’s poetry and humanistic representation. Berlioz’s Beatrice and Benedict derived from Shakespeare’s mature comedy Much Ado About Nothing. Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is based on Shakespeare’s early comedy of the same name. In creating these works both composers were drawn to specific qualities considered uniquely “Shakespearean.”