“The Dream” and “Marguerite and Armand,” one light play, the other a tragedy, manage to span huge stories through fantastical compression. The story, the choreography, all refined to a purified form in which I can sense the light flutter and exacting beguilement of Ako Kondo’s Titania, and the very real ache of Harris’s Marguerite; the everlasting spring of Brett Chynoweth’s Puck to mislead night wanderers, and the tragic realisation of Brook’s Armand that with every turn to the left says, you should have known better. Created a year apart, and guided by scores by Felix Mendelssohn, orchestrated by John Lanchbery, and Franz Liszt, in the third version of the score arranged by Dudley Simpson, with a piano solo of longing at the keys performed by Andrew Dunlop, respectively, beauty transcends the livestream.[2] As guest conductor Barry Wordsworth introduces, “every phrase in the ballet matches the music, and how the mood that you get from the stage, from the dancers, is so in tune with what’s happening musically in the pit.” Similar to the duality of ‘of its time’ timelessness, I am both ‘in the theatre’ and at home, surrounded by domesticity and fairies, in a glorious backlit jumble swifter than Shakespeare’s wandering moon.

From tender recollections of a past love to recalling earlier transformations, the night ends in the green grove enchantment of the fairy realm, where I can wear long ears for a spell, comparable to Luke Marchant’s Bottom, on the proviso that it is just a loan. Magic ensures that Valerie Terechenko’s Helena finally receives the adoration of her Demetrius, performed by Mason Lovegrove. Chengwu Guo’s commanding fairy king, Oberon, ensures he is the one to meet by break of day. And magic (planning, timing) ensures that Harris ends a brilliant and varied career—spanning the almighty armoured, characterful Queen of Hearts, in Christopher Wheeldon’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” to the irrepressible green electrical current within William Forsythe’s “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated”—on a well-deserved high. In a role Brook feels is a perfect fit for Harris, in their post-performance conversation, Harris enthuses, “I think it makes it all the more special [to bow out on a debut role]. There’s so many milestones within these last weeks’ [at the Opera House]. A debut and a retirement all mixed in one,” not unlike Marguerite’s own reminisces upon a life fully lived.[3]