Should Thomas have gone on my list of neglected composers? Well, it's irrelevant now, although I have to say, I cannot wrap my head around a French person named "Thomas." Hey, I'm sure if I looked, I could find any number of French people with non typically French-sounding names, so that's neither here nor there, but it's how I feel, dernit! I guess this isn't a super-well-known opera, but it's doing okay, compartively: there's the Met production I saw, there's one on Operavision right now, there are a few DVDs...not too shabby.
This Met 2010 production is the first time they'd staged it in over a hundred years; they came back to it because of Simon Keenlyside, who apparently had been making waves as the character throughout Europe. And yet, in his interview, Keenlyside sounds weirdly unsure about the opera: "It offends many people that it isn't Hamlet, but it ISN'T--it's text-driven, it's just not Shakespeare text-driven, and IF it's possible to forget that it isn't Hamlet the play . . . then it's still, uh, it still can be a powerful evening, I think." I mean, personally, I think any Shakespearean opera that's any good is good because of the composer; Shakespeare is great because of the language, and given that you're not going to have that in the opera, you've gotta rely on the actual...opera-y bits. Still, sounding a bit defensive there about the divergences from the text. Totally unnecessary!
Still, let's consider the text and the changes Thomas hath wrought. So as I said, this doesn't really feature Shakespearean dialogue, though it does include occasional fragments of Shakespeare. So how about "to be or not to be?" you definitely ask. And yes it's there, and it's actually pretty funny: I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with it per se as part of a libretto, but it's hard not to compare it to the iconic original, and note that it looks like a rendition by a hapless student who was supposed to memorize the soliloquy but really only had a vague idea of what it was about along with a few bits and pieces and had to frantically try to fake it:
To be or not to be
Oh, the mystery!
To die...to sleep.
To sleep
Oh, to find you again!
If only I could break my bond to this earth!
Then?
What is the undiscovered country from which no traveler ever returns?
To be or not to be
Oh, the mystery
To die...to sleep.
To sleep
Oh, the mystery!
Oh, the mystery!
To die...
To sleep...
Perchance to dream!
Well, anyway. As for the plot itself: it...kind of follows the play, at least at first. It features most of the characters, short of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern and Fortinbras. However, some of them, notably Polonius and Horatio, have had their roles considerably cut down. Polonius especially stands out for his lack of importance: he sings like two lines and then disappears. Hamlet doesn't kill him, and we're left to assume that Ophelia's madness is exclusively Hamlet-related, nothing to do with her pa being done in, which...it makes her character seem more trivial, is what it does, to me, anyway. Hmm.
But let me tell you about the ending, which is significantly different from Shakespeare. Spoilers for weird variation on ancient story! Okay, so Hamlet is brooding in the graveyard when Laertes appears. They fight, and mortally stab one another, but, in operatic fashion, Hamlet's death is sufficiently protracted that he's able to do some more stuff. Ophelia's funeral procession comes by, with Gertrude and Claudius. Hamlet's all ready to die, but then Ghost Dad appears and orders him to murder Claudius. So he does, and then expires. Gertrude, surprisingly, lives, though she's none too happy about these goings on. But that's not the half of it: this production is a revision of the original libretto, in which Hamlet lives and Ghost Dad orders him to be king now. I...don't really know how to feel about this. I'm not offended by the desecration of the Sacred Text blahdy blah, but...it's weird. And you sort of wonder, what exactly is the point here? And if you're able to just completely change things so cavalierly (whether talking about Thomas or the revisers who messed with the text), then how much sense does this story make, anyway? Shouldn't the ending in some way be determined by what had gone before?
This production DOES show off some great acting, I'll say that much. That seems to be part of the purpose of the fairly sparse production (I suspect that the costumes were the most expensive part of it). Sure, Keenlyside Hamlets the shit out of it, but equally good is Jennifer Larmore (whom I don't think I'd ever seen before) as a tortured Gertrude. James Morris is predictably reliable as Claudius, though the role actually doesn't give him that much to do. The only relative weak spot, I think, is Marlis Petersen's Ophelia. I LIKE Petersen; I don't think it's just that she's a bad actor like Diane Damrau. But...eh. She does not sell me the character, possibly because she stepped in at the last minute due to illness. Who did she replace? It's none other than Natalie Dessay, and I've gotta say, HOLY SHIT would I have rather seen Dessay in this role. Oh my goodness. Well, so it goes.
I don't think it's an all-time great opera, but it certainly has its moments, including a very good first-act love duet between Hamlet and Ophelia, and a fun gravedigger duet near the end. And, of course, there's a mad scene for Ophelia, which...well, it's still okay, but all I could think of was Dessay in Lucia di Lammermoor and how she would have crushed it (not that I think that this scene in itself is as good as that one). I dunno. Worth seeing.
Naturally, this isn't the only operatic version of Hamlet. One of the others was written in 1936 by a Lativan composer named Jānis Kalniņš. The only reason I know about this is that a while ago Operavision had a Latvian Opera Hundredth Anniversary Concert up, which included pieces from various Latvian operas that that we will never ever see unless Operavision takes pity on us. Anyway, one of them was an apparently humorous (based on the sound and the body language; there were no subtitles) gravedigger duet therefrom. It was pretty good! I want to see the whole thing.
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