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At the summer solstice, Opera Theatre of St. Louis mounts a new production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,� Benjamin Britten’s 1960 opera closely based upon the Bard’s play. SLSO Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin leads a stacked cast in Britten’s dreamlike score which boasts many lovely moments.

“Britten’s second act ending... When I heard that for the first time I just started crying,� Slatkin says. “It’s so gorgeous. And then the very end, as they’re saying goodnight and goodbye to everybody, so beautiful.�

Britten’s “Midsummer� lives in the penumbra of opera’s standard repertory, not truly rare, but more seldom performed than his dramas “Peter Grimes� and “Billy Budd.� OTSL staged it once before, in 1992. Among its challenges, it requires 19 principal singers, who operate almost as three separate casts, the fairies, the Athenians and the mechanicals.

Britten and his life partner and librettist, Peter Pears, dispensed with Shakespeare’s first act and streamlined the text. Set pieces for the King of the Fairies, Oberon, as he utters his turmoil-creating spells, structure the opera. Slatkin notes influence from one of Britten’s favorite composers, Felix Mendelssohn, in creating a dreamy atmosphere.

“Britten has these four chords that he’s going to use as the basis of his second act. There’s another composer who wrote music for ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and also starts his work with four chords—that’s Mendelssohn. I think that’s the key to this whole piece, that Britten is acknowledging Mendelssohn.�

As usual, OTSL rosters a fine blend of experienced singers and young artists. And the vets range in experience with their roles, from role debuts, to the résumé of countertenor James Laing, now in his 11th staging of “Midsummer� as Oberon.

“Midsummer� lacks a villain as such, but Oberon manipulates his wife Tytania and the four Athenian lovers in fairly dastardly ways. In opera, low male voices usually play the antagonist, but Britten cast Oberon as a countertenor, with the legendary Alfred Deller at the premiere.

Laing began his career as a bass-baritone but quickly transitioned to countertenor and relishes the chance to revisit Oberon at OTSL with its thrust stage and 987 seats: “Because of that thrust and the fact that you have those sides, it retains that intimacy. You don’t often get the chance to perform (that way) from an acting perspective. I’m an actor who sings, is how I see myself.�

Laing views that closeness to audience as how opera will survive. “That’s how I see the future of opera, that’s for sure. It’s obviously changed over the last 40 or 50 years. I think the art form is moving forward to become more of an intimate dramatic thing, and it’s interesting.�

“Midsummer� probably categorizes as a dramedy rather than strictly comedy, and as “intimate dramatic� moments go, it’s hard to beat the prolonged squabble between Helena and Hermia in Britten’s second act. Most productions feature frenetic stage business between the women, and their lovers Demetrius and Lysander.

Soprano Teresa Perrotta, an OTSL debutante but a veteran of “Midsummer� at Santa Fe Opera, says that Britten and the Bard have done most of the work of making the scene funny. “I laugh at every single rehearsal. Shakespeare is so brilliant in his writing and so is Britten, and the way they set up the world and how they set up the music and the text for Helena... as long as you just lean into that craziness, I feel like that takes care of the comedy.�

Perrotta is happy to return to the role. “It was actually the first principal professional role I’d ever been cast to do. I did it in Santa Fe in 2021, and it fits like a glove.�

Her frenemy in the show, Hermia, is sung by a mezzo-soprano beloved of St. Louis audiences, Jennifer Johnson Cano. (Where’d she go to high school? St. Pius X in Festus). Cano is closer to Laing’s mid-career seniority in opera, but makes her role debut as Hermia, one which she didn’t anticipate getting to sing since “Midsummer� isn’t frequently programmed.

She too stresses Britten’s writing in producing comedy. “The trickiest part of the role is the rhythm, which I think is most often true in something that’s comical because the composer is choosing to write your music in such a way that it comes out as funny.

“He is very precise about what he wants, and again, the beautiful thing about Britten’s compositional style is it takes you a while to wrap your head around it. But then you hit a day in the process, and you go ‘Oh, it makes sense.’ You just have to live in it for a bit.�

Coming home, Cano happily greets OTSL for the first time since her success there as Orpheus in Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice� in 2018. And she reminds us what a treasure we have in OTSL.

“It’s so meaningful. This was the first place that I ever saw an opera. It’s the first place I had a professional contract as a Gerdine Young Artist. It’s the first place I ever sang a principal role. To come back and do a title character is incredible. And then, to be here for the 50th anniversary season, when the company itself has really been a part of my life for half of that. It’s incredible.�