Ah, happy schooldays! Remember the systemic bullying, the callous cruelty towards the lonely misfit, the homoerotic canings, the groping by the pervy classics teacher, burning down the school hall, urinating in the playground and watching the repressed music mistress engage in sado-masochistic rumpy-pumpy with the drug-crazed caretaker?
It’s all there in Christopher Alden’s new English National Opera production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And if you don’t recall any of that in Shakespeare, or in Britten’s operatic treatment of the play, you are (in Alden’s view, anyway) missing the point. – The Times
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano’) about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia’ column for Dancing Times magazine.
