Based on Shakespeare’s famous play, the comic ballet revolves around the adventures of four young lovers, a group of amateur actors and their interactions with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. Romantic intrigues of two couples are complicated still further by entering the forest where The King and The Queen of the Fairies preside.

Synopsis

ACT I

Imps and spirits lure young men and women into a forest, where they play all sorts of pranks on them, making off with their clothes.
The night-world of fairies, spirits and witches awakens. Puck and Robin, servants of their Fairy Prince, Oberon, note the foul mood between their lord and his wife, the Fairy Queen Titania. In order to amuse their lordships, they don human clothing and offer themselves as catamites to the princely pair. This provokes Oberon into a fit of rage, which grows more and more furious, finally erupting into a magically invoked thunderstorm. The only thing that can mollify the Fairy King is the idea of playing a trick on his wife. He commands Puck to come up with a magic potion that will make Titania fall in love with the first monster to come along.
Enter the workmen. They prepare a place for their boss and his bride to hold their wedding picnic.
Enter the couples. In good humour, Helena and Hermia meet Lysander and Demetrius. Helena is in love with Demetrius, but he, like his friend Lysander, has got his eye on Hermia. Helena remains on stage, unloved, but decides to fight for Demetrius.
After her retinue departs, Titania lies down alone in the forest to sleep, while Oberon casts a spell on her.
Close by, the workmen rehearse a play they intend to put on at the wedding of their boss. Puck and Robin watch, and take great delight in turning Bottom into an ass. The ensuing noise wakes Titania, who immediately falls in love with him.

ACT II

In an excess of high spirits, Puck and Robin also bewitch the two couples with Oberon's magic potion. The four lovers are completely befuddled, not knowing anymore whom they loved before or ought to love now, and a fierce argument breaks out among them, from which they are only released by the onset of sleep. Oberon now arrives, looks at the four beautiful sleeping strangers, feels himself drawn to them and moved to get to know the world of humans, which fills him with both melancholy and fascination.
Upon leaving the four, the nocturnal world of witches and spirits prepares to take control of the humans. Oberon intervenes, preserving the couples from the worst and ordering Puck and Robin to break the spell and bring the freed couples together.
For his part, Oberon frees Titania from her enchantment. And with the coming of the dawn, Bottom, too, is liberated from his spell. He no longer has the form of an ass - to his disappointment, for he felt happy in that state.
Finally, the lovers come happily awake, each one in the arms of his or her proper mate: Hermia in Lysander's, Helena in Demetrius's.
The boss' wedding is over. The workmen join the bridal couple and their guests to put on their badly-rehearsed play: "The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe". Their performance is not very successful, but this does not stop the wedding party from celebrating the whole day through.
For Oberon and Titania, meanwhile, this midsummer night's dream ends the way it began: both are again in a foul mood. And since his own potion won't serve to make Oberon love Titania again, it is once more up to Puck and Robin to find a way to amuse their lordships...

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