Der Park

The characters and action are "inhabited and moved, elevated and fooled by the spirit of Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream" says Strauss in his introduction to the play. Titania and Oberon find themselves in a rather dirty city park, where they attempt to bring erotic desire, sensuality and poetry to the people. Their magic doesn't work, though: the world has become disinterested in love, and to the hectic, completely self involved present day people these spirits of nature seem like freaks and crazies. Day-to-day realpolitic keep the upper hand, and in the end, even Titania and Oberon have to comply.