‘Midsummer’ Casts Lighthearted Spell on L.A. Philharmonic Festivities

A genuinely festive concert preceded by cocktails and followed by supper and fireworks made the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s gala benefit performance, celebrating its 81st season, a bright occasion Saturday night.

Benefiting the orchestra’s education and community programs as well as the Musicians Pension Fund, the event featured the Philharmonic, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, two vocal soloists, the women of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and some 20 actors. (Gala tickets sold for $600 to $2,500 while concert-only ducats were priced normally at $15 to $100.)The combined forces performed Mendelssohn’s Overture and Incidental Music to Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” interspersed with excerpts from the play.

Under Salonen, beginning his eighth season as music director of the Philharmonic, the musical performance went smoothly, and in effortless synchronization with the abridged dramatic action. The Philharmonic is an experienced Mendelssohn interpreter, and has played this score indoors and outdoors since the 1930s.

Salonen & Co. delivered its lightness as well as its substance, aided solidly by soprano Laura Claycomb--who sings Bellini’s Giulietta for Los Angeles Opera, opening Wednesday--and mezzo Megan Dey-Toth and the Master Chorale women.

The bonus was the amusing semi-staging of excerpts from the play, with actors from stage and television romping through their parts--gamely and sometimes hilariously. (Rehearsals were minimal for this one-time-only reading.)

*

Lightheartedly authoritative as Theseus and Quince were Music Center poobahs Peter Hemmings (general director of Los Angeles Opera) and Gordon Davidson (artistic director of Center Theatre Group), respectively.

Commanding as Oberon and Titania were David Ogden Stiers and Alfre Woodard. Peter MacNicol played Puck with unpushy humor and perfect clarity. As Bottom and Flute, Brent Spiner and Gedde Watanabe kept the laughs coming. The lovers--Rosie Perez, Rosalind Chao, Thomas Gibson and Simon Templeman--maintained strong focus in their scenes. Kirk Graves imbued Snout with an airy, Down South sensibility.

Visually, all these varied goings on were abetted by Ben Donenberg’s breezy stage direction, by the atmospheric and effective lighting by Trevor Norton. Flowers bedecked the front of the stage, and the forest was suggested by a simple stage drop; a star-filled sky seemed to fill the back of the stage, behind the orchestra. Altogether, it was an elegant beginning to the Philharmonic’s 1999-2000 season.