William Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff said in Henry IV, Part II, “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.” We can broadly paraphrase Sir John when speaking of Shakespeare, who was not only musical in himself, but the cause of music in others.
Shakespeare’s world was filled with music, his plays and poems sing with glorious language and dance with splendid rhythms. Like any good dramatist, Shakespeare also used songs and dance music to underscore events on stage. His lyrics to the many songs in his plays have been set to music by such composers as Franz Schubert, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Roger Quilter and others.
Incidental music to stage productions and scores to filmed versions of the plays feature some of the most inspired Shakespearean music. Felix Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream perfectly portrays the fairy world of Oberon, Titania and Puck, while also capturing the earthy humor of the low characters, Peter Quince and Nick Bottom. 20th century composers have reveled in the opportunities that Shakespeare on film has offered. Dimitry Shostakovich wrote scores for Hamlet and King Lear, and Sir William Walton’s music for three films starring Sir Laurence Olivier (Hamlet, Henry V, Richard III) are classics.
The opera and ballet stages have had their share of Shakespearean masterworks. Sergey Prokofiev’s grand ballet Romeo and Juliet glows with some his most brilliant orchestral writing. The three Shakespeare operas of Giuseppe Verdi, Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff, are mainstays of the operatic repertoire and actually rival the plays in passion, drama and wit. Verdi worshipped Shakespeare and was actually planning an opera based on King Lear, but the project never came to fruition.
Verdi didn’t hold a monopoly on Shakespearean operas. The title role in Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet offers a star turn for baritones and Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a superb blend of exotic vocal and orchestral writing. Perhaps more than any other play, Romeo and Juliet has been a favorite subject. The tale of tragic young love is ideal for operatic treatment and it inspired such composers as Charles Gounod, Vincenzo Bellini, Frederick Delius and Leonard Bernstein.
Romeo and Juliet is also the subject of the most famous of all Shakespeare-inspired works, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture. The fiery young conductor Gustavo Dudamel leads the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestral of Venezuela in our featured recording, which also includes Tchaikovsky’s music for Hamlet and The Tempest. Some Shakespearean opera trivia: what Shakespeare-based work opened the new Metropolitan Opera House in 1966? Answer: Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra.
by Craig Zeichner
Featured Albums
