From Drama To Opera

Benjamin Britten(1913-1976)was one of the famous British composers in the 20 th century.The opera "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was a work completed in April 1960,adapted from Shakespeare's drama of the same title.It creatively divides the world of lovers,the world of elves,and the world of civilians in Athens into three layers,and draws on a warm and graceful love story between four young lovers by means of motivation,harmony and tone.This dissertation takes the opera "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as the research object.First of all,based on the creative intentions of Shakespeare and Britten,a brief review of Shakespeare's drama creation in the literary field is carried out,so as to make a deep and detailed analysis of the ideological connotation and literary value of the drama "Midsummer Night Dream";then roughly summarize Britten's creation process of the opera "A Midsummer Night's Dream",and attempt to generalize Britten's effective means of searching for and excavating the art form of opera of the same title in order to restore the composition of the composer to the greatest extent.In the second chapter,the author attempts to explore the dramatic characteristics of the libretto in the opera "Midsummer Night's Dream".Based on the targeted analysis of the literary features of the libretto,this article discusses how the libretto writer should proceed from the perspective of the overall and comprehensive artistic form of the opera,and in the face of different levels of characters and intricate plots provided by the original literature script,the libretto writer adapted a series of screening,deletion and other processing methods.By comparing this libretto with the original literature script,this author tries to analysis and interpret how Britten specifically adapted some of the details in Shakespeare's original work,re-established important characters and reorganized the scene structures of the original drama,and make further analysis and interpretation of the repositioning of the original ideological themes.In the third chapter,the author attempts to explore the dramatic characteristics of the musical creation in the opera "Midsummer Night's Dream".This part tries to explain how Britten vividly portrayed three important figures of Parker,Helena and Hermia with a musical language full of his personality;and to interpret the specific use of Britten's own "Urmotiv" and other independent theme motives;and finally make the in-depth analysis of the dramatic performance of the opera's overture,prelude and interlude.