Sounding Shakespeare

Puzzle Piece Opera Company

Sounding Shakespeare is a pastiche of operatic scenes, art songs and musical scenes exploring dreams in Shakespeare.

St Alfege Church

“We are such stuff/As dreams are made on, and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep.” (The Tempest 1623)Sounding Shakespeare is a pastiche of operatic scenes, art songs and musical scenes exploring dreams in Shakespeare's works. Dreams, we know, are the strangest thing. They look as perfect as they feel odd. The most impossible combinations of people, objects and places can occur without arousing the slightest suspicion.Dreams encompass irrational fears, hidden desires and otherwise unconceivable thoughts. Whether in comedies, tragedies or poems, dreams are central in Shakespeare’s texts. They are used to push the dreamers’ imagination to its limits, transform their beliefs and even provide them with a moment of extraordinary self-awareness. The audience is invited to a musical and theatrical maze in which Shakespeare’s characters wander a boundless dream, sharing their itinerant faiths. Juliet encounters Lady Macbeth, Ariel serves Oberon and Desdemona joins Ophelia in eternal sleep. Sleep is, as has been several times, a metaphor for death, but so it is for joy and for blessing. These dreamers encounter the unpredictable, the unexpected, enacting their monologues, quarrels and secret love meetings. Sorrow, love, grief and laughter coexist in a world made of words and music.Music is the feast of the evening. From Verdi and Bellini to Leonard Bernstein, from Ambroise Thomas to Benjamin Britten, also including art songs by Elizabeth Maconchy and Jonathan Dove. Music will drive us through the dreamers’ wills, failures and hopes, portraying enemies and lovers.

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Sounding Shakespeare

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Sounding Shakespeare

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