A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970) | Part 2

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The second part of a radio version of Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night's Dream, arranged and produced in stereo by Raymond Raikes. It is nearly midsummer-night in 1970, and this may be one of the last chances to hear Shakespeare's fairy-comedy before it is reinterpreted by Kott and Brook. The music by the late Anthony Bernard was written for productions of the play at Stratford-upon Avon in the 1930s and re-orchestrated by the composer in 1943 for the Theatre Royal, Santiago, who had asked the British Council to recommend an English score to replace the over-familiar Mendelssohn music. A fragment of an Elizabethan melody 'Heartsease' is used with variations in the music for Oberon and Titania, and the music for the clowns is an old English folk tune.