A Fairy Queen: Recent Episodes
IN Series
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare - transformed into a podcast experience. With music by Purcell, this is an episodic podcast opera inspired by classic airwave dramas, featuring a Grammy-Award-winning international cast and orchestra: Lucy Page, Jake Arditti, Sara Couden, Jarrod Lee, Melissa Wimbish, Carl DuPont, Sylvia Leith, Aaron Sheehan, John TK Scherch, and more! Ensembles Innovatio and 't Kabinet provide period orchestration from Baltimore and Amsterdam.
On the second evening of their revels, Puck narrates the feud between Fairy King Oberon and his Queen Titania, who soon square. Cursing Titania and her fairy band, Oberon consorts with Puck to pick an herb which will make her, when placed on her eyelids while asleep, love the first creature she sees upon waking. Finding her asleep he administers the drops of the flower, and when she wakes she spies Bottom, with an ass's head upon his shoulders. In love she seduces him, coddles him, tickles him, and makes love to him. Oberon is broken by this and wakes his queen and they begin to heal as the sun rises around them.
On the third and longest night in their playing, the fairies play out the story of four young lovers in the woods, As they sleep the fairies led by Puck, Oberon, and Titania, confuse their love with drops from the magical flower. When they wake they learn that there is no fairy tale in A Fairy Queen as they confront heartbreak and confusion. As spring breaks and the sun rises they begin to rebuild their lives.
In this opening episode a prologue introduces the world of fairies and the plots that they will play. First come the Mechanicals, a group of odd folks setting out to perform a play. They are led by Quince and their stay is Bottom, a stuttering fool who's ass like personality becomes transformed to reality when he encounters Oberon, the Fairy King. Now drunk and transmuted, Bottom is molested by a band of fairies and forced to recite verse to them before falling fast asleep as dawn breaks.
Finally the Mechanicals return to perform their play. Chaos mysteriously turns to comfort as fiasco becomes revelation, The fairies gather in an epilogue just before the fourth nights end, at break of day, and Puck makes amends.