Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

'A Midsummer Night's Dream', with Mendelssohn's music played by an orchestra in the forest, restores the original excitement of the Wedding March and brings Shakespeare's meditation on love into a contemporary setting

A QUESTION FOR YOU. What do the Wedding March, the year 1809 and the line "I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows" have in common? Well, the composer Felix Mendelssohn was born in 1809. A precocious youth, he went to see a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dreamwhen he was 17. He was so impressed that he came straight home and wrote an "overture" to the play; a shimmery, elfin affair that has been described as one of the most accomplished pieces of music ever written.