The stuff that dreams are made of - this quote from Shakespeare goes to the heart of Robert North's new ballet evening with the dance adaptations The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Magical forces, spirits and nature each influence the human world, the real and the fantastic are intertwined, the line between life and dreams is ambivalent.

Robert North invents a framework for the storm: an artist - Shakespeare or Sibelius - falls asleep at his desk and becomes Prospero in his dreams. He dreams of a storm being unleashed by the air spirit Ariel, and the characters of the drama come to life in his imagination. Prospero and his daughter Miranda are fighting the sea queen. They are stranded on an island inhabited by strange creatures, where Prospero becomes the ruler and has magical powers.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) felt inspired by the subject to compose incidental music that characterises the artistically interwoven plot threads with bright orchestral colours.

The appeal of A Midsummer Night's Dream lies in its ambiguity. Drama, passion and comedy determine what happens when human and spirit worlds collide in the nocturnal forest, where love as an elemental yet unstable force breaks ground. Fast, funny and entertaining, Robert North's choreography shows the amorous entanglements of the love experiment initiated by the elf king Oberon and his aide Puck, which threatens to get out of hand.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) succeeded in capturing the poetry and magical atmosphere of the material in a sympathetic manner. His incidental music to the famous wedding march characterises lovers, craftsmen, the kingdom of the elves and the forces of nature with a multifaceted, plastic sound language.

Lower Rhine Sinfoniker | Damen des Opernchores