This article comments on the use of Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński’s 1950 translation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the rock-opera adaptation created by Leszek Możdżer and Wojciech Kościelniak in 2001. Inspecting the production’s critical reception against the background of the translation’s origin and its position in the canon of Polish renderings of Shakespeare’s plays, I explain the critics’ negative reactions to the merge of this traditional poetic translation with modern scenography and music. Analysing a selection of songs, I identify a number of features of Gałczyński’s text that decide about its functionality in this fairly unusual theatrical test. I also describe the modifi cations introduced in the translation by the authors of the adaptation in the process of transforming the play’s text into a quasi-libretto.