‘Midsummer’ Marriage: Orchestra, Actors Meet In A Shakespeare Romp

By James Bash -March 16, 2026

HONOLULU — What were you doing when you were 17 years old? That’s the question conductor Dane Lam put to the audience to introduce the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Neal S. Blaisdell Concert Hall on March 8. Mendelssohn wrote the famous overture as a teenager and returned to complete the rest of the incidental music 16 years later. Although the piece is typically performed with a narrator, the HSO shared the stage with actors from the Manoa Valley Theatre, seamlessly presenting Mendelssohn’s music with Shakespeare’s comedy to make a very entertaining production.

Lam, who is of Australian and Chinese descent, knows a thing or two about accomplishing amazing tasks at a young age. At age 18, just after graduating from high school, he was selected for the Conductor Development program, now known as the Australian Conducting Academy, and impressed Italian conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti, then head of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. Gelmetti invited Lam to study in Tuscany for three summers and to conduct the overture to Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro in three subscription concerts with the Sydney Symphony.

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