A Midsummer Night's Dream - opera a cappella, on Albany Records. Available in fine record stores and online at albanyrecords.com, arkivmusic.com, amazon.com, and hbdirect.com.
Is it possible to write an opera without an orchestra?
Composer Michael Ching’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”…has a “voicestra,” an ensemble of a cappella singers, instead of instruments in the pit.
Mr. Ching’s remarkably inventive opera is a celebration of what voices can do and still, with the exception of a few startling vocal percussion effects, sound like voices. The voicestra…supports the singers on the stage, its overlapping lines and syllables weaving around them, amplifying their characters and conflicts, sometimes echoing their words (or even their thoughts), or supplying atmosphere.
The voicestra gives the opera an added human dimension…
—Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal