Even the most casual listener is likely to be familiar with at least one part of Felix Mendelssohn's score to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Specifically, the famed Wedding March, which endures as one of the most instantly recognizable pieces of music ever written and continues to accompany many a walk down the aisle. Of course, there are also a great deal of fans of the many other magnificently delightful moments in the score, including the Overture, which was written as a singular piece some 16 years before the rest was composed. Those who have experienced the entirety of Mendelssohn's work, however, are much harder to come by, simply because full performances and recordings are rare.
Which is part of what makes the upcoming Calgary Philharmonic concert, Hans Graf Returns: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so special –– you'll hear every note. Graf first performed the complete score with the Orchestra here a year into his 1995 to 2003 tenure as the Calgary Phil’s Music Director, and has since taken it across the globe. The one constant in all these productions with Graf has been Calgary actress Maureen Thomas. In giving voice and inhabiting a multitude of the play’s characters –– from Puck to a braying donkey –– Thomas' performance allows for the inclusion of the many little cues found in the Mendelssohn's incidental music that otherwise would not make sense in a concert performance.
Thomas, a veteran of Calgary stages –– including being a cast member of both Theatre Calgary and Lunchbox Theatre’s inaugural professional productions –– answered a few questions about her long creative partnership and how what she’s come to think of as her defining role(s) first came to be.
Mendelssohn wrote the incidental music for Midsummer's Night's Dream to go with a full production of Shakespeare’s play. The Scherzo and the Overture are standalone pieces, but also all the incidental music that goes with the play. You get little bits and pieces that introduce a fairy or introduce Puck or show that Oberon is turned around, but without the script, without Shakespeare's story, the music wouldn't make any sense, and it would be odd to listen to. As far as Hans and I know, this is the only production in the world where you can play all of the music because so much of the text is included in the performance. It's not big, lengthy pieces of text, but very carefully chosen bits and pieces that add up to the story.
How this evolved was that the brilliant, award-winning playwright John Murrell took Shakespeare’s text, and, through careful editing, worked out how to fit it to almost all of Mendelssohn's score. Then a few years after that was written, Hans and I worked together to add another scene or two so that absolutely every note that Mendelssohn wrote could be played.
The first time we did it was in 1997 when Hans was the music director of the Calgary Phil. Calgary loved Hans, and Hans loved Calgary. He had seen a production of this with the Berlin Philharmonic with a single actress –– though not necessarily the scenes I'm doing. He thought that it would be a wonderful gift for Calgary, and so he asked the Phil to find an actress for him –– which was me!
I insisted that it was way too complicated; I couldn't possibly do it. But Hans insisted I could, and, sure enough, I did. Now we have performed it all over the world. We make a good team, but I think Hans could probably do it himself if he didn't have to conduct the Orchestra. He knows most of my lines.
Yes, I do. And it's weird that they're two similar memories, but they were so special. It wasn't really what happened to me so much as what happened around me.
When I did Midsummer Night’s Dream with the National Symphony Orchestra at their summer home at Wolf Trap outside Washington, D.C. It’s open air: there are seats that hold hundreds of people and a hillside where the rest of the 3,000 people sit. So, it was an evening performance with a huge orchestra. As it slowly went into nighttime, what I didn't know was that I was surrounded by fireflies! And it's a story about fairies! Everybody who saw it said, ‘oh my gosh, that's so neat. How did you get the fireflies there?’ I didn't, but I wish I had been able to see it because that would have been really wonderful.
The other time was in France in a square in Bordeaux. And the same thing, it was early July and night fell during the scenes. Night was closing in on us and it was getting darker and darker. It was very, very quiet in the open air. It was just really magical.
I hugely the high level of skill and discipline that the Calgary Phil musicians have. As a performer myself, I really respect what they deliver on stage, so it sets the bar really high for me. It can be a lot of pressure to be as good as they are. I can maybe outwit them on what I sound like as a donkey. I bet I'm the best donkey in the bunch.
I really feel it's my job to absolutely throw caution to the wind and absolutely plunge into it. I'm the only actor on stage; as a five-foot-two person playing 12 different characters, I just have to go for every single one of them as fully as I can so that I am delivering the same quality of performance as all those musicians.
I work hard to make it understandable because many people hear something in Shakespearean English and think that they can’t understand it.
[In this production] all the characters have Canadian accents, apart from Philostrate. Each character is their own person. They have a different physicality and a different voice. I try not to do a mockery of, say, the male voices, I try to genuinely do it as if I was a guy. And then as if I were a fairy. And then the Queen of the Fairies, who's quite different from the other fairies. Everybody has their voice; everybody has their way of standing or moving.
I can't do this piece alone. It takes Hans, the Orchestra, it takes me, and it takes the audience's imagination. They have to go with me. They have to use their imagination.
See Hans Graf Returns: A Midsummer Night’s Dream on June 5 and 6, 2026, in the Jack Singer Concert Hall.