Britten's ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’: Making an Opera from Shakespeare's Comedy by William H.L. Godsalve (review)

HUMANITIES 365 Nonetheless, the book is a valuable addition to Dinesen studies and is likely to prove extremelyvaluable tobothscholarsand general readers. The quality of the essays is consistently high and the book has been edited with care, competence, and meticulous attention to detail. (CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM ) William H.L. Godsalve. Britten's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream': Making an Opera from Shakespeare's Comedy Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 240 . $39..50 There is a place for a book such as this, but it clearly belongs on a scholar's shelf rather than on those of the other groups envisaged in the preface: 'opera lovers, amateurs of English literature and of music, and students.' Dr Godsalve offers an exhaustive analysis of the development of Britten's opera and its relationship to Shakespeare's comedy. As such, his study offers some valuable insights for a specialist readership. It takes its origin from an interdisciplinary doctoral dissertation at the University of Saskatchewan and retains all too many signs of its genesis. The prose is laboured and repetitive. Tables of analysis punctuate the text when they might more profitably have been consigned to an appendix. The reader anxious to become more familiar with a magical theatrical work must struggle to capture the magic. All too often, particularly in the early chapters, one confronts such statements of the obvious as: 'For well-known reasons beyond the scope of this book to describe, the experience of a listener-spectator ... in the opera house must be different from that of a score reader in the closet.' Quite. The limited readership of this monograph will long ago have taken such platitudes in its stride. Much, in fact, of the first two or three chapters is dispensable in the light of the later sections, a weakness stemming directly from aiming at too diverse a readershlp. The later chapters might well prove more effective in the form of separate journal articles aimed at different constituencies. Nevertheless their publication together in a book does confer the benefit of convenience oia work of reference. The value of the study derives from such chapters as 'Cutting the Text,' 'Significant Forms in the Music,' 'Vocal Passages,' and 'Instrumental Passages.' In their various ways these afford genuine insights both into the process of composition and into the final version of the opera as it is encountered in the theatre. In the detailed account of cuts to Shakespeare's text, which necessarily involved a rearrangement of plot elements, . Godsalve provides genuine illumination. The greater emphasis on the fairies, lovers, and fustics, with the consequent reduction of the court, focuses the opera much more powerfully, as does the concentration of the 366 LETTERS IN CANADA 1995 setting m the wood. The placmg of the opera in the overall context of Britten's concern with the world of night, sleep, and dreams also supplies a helpful additional level of understanding. The chapters on the music frequently make demands beyond the competence of the general reader. One needs the, full score at hand to work through some passages adequately. The discussion of the distinction between 'tonality set' and 'tone row' requires a certain degree of musical sophistication to appreciate it fully. When Godsalve develops some of his own ideas, his writing acquires an edge which gives it interest and energy. All too often, however, as in chapter 6 ('Implications of the Use of Music'), the edge becomes blunted through dutiful citing of authorities whether on music in general- Langer, Kerman, etc. - or on some particular aspect, e.g. Copland on film music. Such a tactic is perhaps inevitable in a dissertation but quickly becomes wearisome in a book allegedly aimed at the general reading public. The readership of this study will necessarily remain small, but that doesn't diminish its overall usefulness as a reference work and as an examination of creative processes. (ERIC DOMVILLE) Sherrill E. Grace, editor. Sursum Corda!: The Collected Letters ofMalcolm LownJ, Volume 1: 1926-46 University of Toronto Press. xliv, 690 . $49.95 This edition of Malcolm Lowry's collected letters is an event not only for Lowry scholars but for readers of modern literature or of letters generally. Unlike the correspondence of, say, Faulkner...