Two pairs of young lovers, more or less frustrated, flee into the woods to escape conventions and demands and to find their true selves. But the forest is a place not only of freedom, fancy and dreams but also nightmares, chaos and folly. This is the domain of Oberon and his queen Titania, who are in the middle of a marital crisis so serious that nature itself is in a state of imbalance. With his lifelong companion Peter Pears, Benjamin Britten transformed Shakespeare’s play into an operatic libretto and wrote its beautiful, enchanting music. Sorcery, entanglements and distorted perceptions of reality mean that everything is turned upside down for those seeking love in the woods. In Royal Swedish Opera’s new production of Shakespeare’s comic fantasy, a forest is more a psychological location than a physical one. Under the baton of Simon Crawford Phillips and stage direction of Tobias Theorell, the merry tale is transformed into an exploration of the subconscious.

After many years of wandering around the world, an anxious composer chooses love over art. But it may be too late to salvage either. Franz Schreker was a popular composer in the early decades of the 20th century, until his music was banned by the Nazis because he was of Jewish background. Der ferne Klang, his first major work, is a late Romantic opera of grand passions. Director Christof Loy is back at the Royal Swedish Opera with a production set in a dreamlike mise en scène.