William Shakespeare
There is no other writer who has inspired as many composers as Shakespeare. Be it opera, orchestral works, ballet music, songs or even musicals, Shakespeare continues to inspire new music. Playlist curated by Bastian Schmalisch.
Read more…Already within his lifetime (1564-1616), Shakespeare’s verses were often set to music and his dramas possibly presented in theatrical performances. However, the examples highlighted in this playlist came into being much later.
Henry Purcell composed his opera ‘The Fairy Queen’ after Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in 1692 which is the oldest example - and aside from Edward Elgar the only Brit - in this list.
Naturally a work as famous as Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s incidental music to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is as essential to this collection as Desdemona’s evening prayer from Verdi’s Otello.
Nevertheless there are also surprises, and composers that one wouldn’t usually associate with Shakespeare, such as Franz Schubert or Richard Wagner. While Wagner later distanced himself from his opera Das Liebesverbot (stemming from Shakespeare’s comedy ‘Measure for Measure’), Schubert set verses from Shakespeare’s largely unknown early comedy ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ in his lied ‘An Silvia’.
Most works refer to classics that are integral to theatrical repertoire today: Hamlet, The Tempest or Romeo and Juliet - many titles instantly give away which Shakespeare work they originate from. Exceptions are Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict (Much Ado About Nothing) and Fauré’s Shylock (The Merchant of Venice), whose titles are derivative of the names of central characters.
The exotics in this collection are the two musical numbers: ‘Somewhere’ from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein - a contemporary adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and Cole Porter’s ‘So in Love’ from Kiss Me Kate - a theatrical farce based on The Taming of the Shrew.