Shakespeare Magazine 07
Kenneth Branagh is cover star of Shakespeare Magazine 07, as the issue's theme is Great Shakespeare Actors. Stanley Wells discusses his book on the subject, while Antony Sher reveals what it's like to play Falstaff. We also go behind the scenes of the My Shakespeare TV series, and Zoe Waites chats about playing Rosalind in the USA. Other highlights include Shakespeare in Turkey, Shakespeare Opera, and the real story of Shakespeare and the Essex Plot. All this, and the Russian fans who made their own edition of David Tennant's Richard II!
Kenneth Branagh is cover star of Shakespeare Magazine 07, as the issue's theme is Great Shakespeare Actors. Stanley Wells discusses his book on the subject, while Antony Sher reveals what it's like to play Falstaff. We also go behind the scenes of the My Shakespeare TV series, and Zoe Waites chats about playing Rosalind in the USA. Other highlights include Shakespeare in Turkey, Shakespeare Opera, and the real story of Shakespeare and the Essex Plot. All this, and the Russian fans who made their own edition of David Tennant's Richard II!
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Opera<br />
“Sweet airs,<br />
that give<br />
delight...”<br />
It’s time for a spot of Desert Island Discs, as our esteemed Music<br />
Correspondent chooses the eight best bits from operas inspired by<br />
<strong>Shakespeare</strong>. With selections from Verdi, Berlioz, Purcell, Britten<br />
and Bernstein, this is <strong>Shakespeare</strong> music with a real wow factor…<br />
Words: Rebecca Franks<br />
After hearing composer Ambroise<br />
Thomas’s Hamlet, Verdi is reported to<br />
have said: “Poor <strong>Shakespeare</strong>, how they<br />
have mistreated him.” It’s a comment<br />
that could apply to a good number of<br />
operas inspired by the Bard. Despite<br />
the eternal allure of <strong>Shakespeare</strong> for<br />
composers, only a handful of the 200<br />
plus works have gone on to become<br />
true classics. And working out why this<br />
should be is probably a whole other<br />
story in itself.<br />
But when it all comes together, the<br />
combination of <strong>Shakespeare</strong>an drama<br />
and character with the rich musical<br />
world of opera is utterly sublime.<br />
Here are eight of the truly great<br />
moments to listen to.<br />
Hector Berlioz<br />
‘Nuit paisible et sereine’<br />
From Béatrice et Bénédict (1863)<br />
Imagine it’s night. The moon is shining and there’s a<br />
gentle breeze. It’s peaceful, apart from the soothing<br />
sounds of insects and birds. It’s that moment of blissful<br />
stillness that Berlioz captures to perfection in ‘Nuit<br />
paisible et sereine’, a duo that comes at the end of<br />
the first act of his Much Ado About Nothing opera,<br />
Béatrice et Bénédict.<br />
Heró and her lady-in-waiting Ursule have been<br />
busy matchmaking but here all the high jinks pause.<br />
Their voices intertwine as they sing to ‘la lune, douce<br />
reine’ – ‘the moon, sweet queen’.<br />
Ralph Vaughan Williams<br />
‘Fantasia on Greensleeves’<br />
From Sir John in Love (1929)<br />
‘Let the sky rain potatoes, let it thunder to the tune<br />
of Greensleeves,’ said Falstaff in The Merry Wives of<br />
Windsor, the play that inspired Vaughan Williams’s<br />
Sir John in Love. And it’s the Fantasia on Greensleeves,<br />
adapted by Ralph Greaves from that very opera, that’s<br />
become one of the work’s best-known moments.<br />
Vaughan Williams’s setting of the already haunting<br />
Greensleeves, a ballad popular since the 16th century,<br />
is big on atmosphere: a flute and harp conjure up a<br />
pastoral English feel, before the strings wordlessly sing<br />
the melody, accompanied by a harp strumming as if it<br />
were a lute in the Tudor court.<br />
36 SHAKESPEARE magazine
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