Thomas - Hamlet (Buxton, 2025)

Ambroise Thomas - Hamlet

Buxton International Festival, 2025

Adrian Kelly, Jack Furness, Alastair Miles, Allison Cook, Gregory Feldmann, Richard Woodall, Yewon Han, Joshua Baxter, Tylor Lamani, Dan D’Souza, Per Bach Nissen, John Ieuan Jones, James Liu

Buxton Opera House, 22nd July 2025

Adapting Shakespeare's Hamlet as a grand opéra would necessarily have imposed certain conventions that could only work against the dramatic flow of the play, not to mention the surely unacceptable requirement to rewrite the play's bleak conclusion, so you can't really fault Ambroise Thomas then for the approach he takes. I doubt that even Verdi, a contemporary of the French composer, would have done it much differently since his own versions of Shakespeare take similar necessary liberties with the plot and characterisation to fit with the conventions of the opera form. Well, he might not have included three (not just one, not just two, but three! Or at least two and a half) grand opéra drinking songs, but you can't fault Thomas for excess when it comes to this particular work. To state the obvious, there is a lot of drama in Hamlet.

And death. A lot of dark drama, death, madness, vengeance (you almost wish Verdi had given it a go on that basis, but we have Macbeth and Otello, not to mention Falstaff, and those are all great in their own way) and, drinking songs notwithstanding, that's the ominous tone that rightly dominates in Thomas's Hamlet. Correspondingly, that's the tone that is established in the 2025 Buxton International Festival production directed by Jack Furness and conducted by Adrian Kelly. It's dark, dramatic in voices, ominous in the music, dynamic in its performance, matching the pent up anger of the production's Hamlet, Gregory Feldmann, who paces the stage like a tiger, raging out self-absorbed soliloquies. It maintains this mood so effectively that it comes as no surprise then when we come to the Act IV, we find that Thomas has composed not just a mad scene for Ophelia, but a whole mad Act.

But there are genuine valid reasons for such excess of emotion in Hamlet. Perhaps Thomas's lyrical score and the truncated French language libretto shorn of the original's poetry don't get to the heart of the many factors that contribute to its depth of expression, but the music although romanticised is dramatically attuned. What it needs to work on stage (and rarely achieves in my experience) is a director who is prepared to delve into what remain contemporary and relevant themes in the play that are not fully exploited in the opera version. Jack Furness does just that in a direct and simple way without over-imposition. One of the many themes that can be drawn out of Hamlet for greater attention is the subject of what it is like to live under surveillance in a corrupt, self serving and authoritarian state and the impact this has on society. If there is any theme that is more relevant to the world (and the UK) today, a way that lets us see deep into the heart of the drama of Hamlet and see the changes happening in our contemporary world reflected back at us, it's this.

This is handled well by the director with simple side touches that don't impose on the dramatic content of the opera, but rather give it depth and context. We get a hint of it right at the beginning of the production when a lone protestor runs to the front of the stage during the wedding of the new king Claudius to his dead brother's wife Gertrude with a poster that suggests 'No Kings' or 'Not My King'. He is quickly bundled off stage by heavily armed militia who continue to carry out brutal arrests and beatings in the musical interludes between acts. At the beginning of the final act a hooded woman is led across the stage, knelt down and summarily shot in the back of the head to the shock of the audience.

Where this is relevant is in how it feeds into Hamlet's behaviour. With such state oppression and killing of civilians going on in the background, his fury at the man who he believes has killed and taken the place of his own father is compounded by his inability to translate that righteous anger into action and prevent such wider crimes against the populace. You can feel that in every scene; it's not self-pitying grief but self-questioning doubt. Hamlet rages impotently and hates himself for it, retreating into madness. In that context, the original 'happy ending' composed by Thomas which hurtles in there with no warning, works really well here. Or is made to do so by Jack Furness in the Buxton production.

Thomas's original ending sees Hamlet alive and crowned king, but since it wasn't felt that this twist would be accepted in Shakespeare's own country, it had to be reworked for the opera's London premiere a year later in 1869. Not that Hamlet expiring over the dead body of Ophelia in the final scene is any truer to Shakespeare, but letting Hamlet live and become ruler opens up more questions that it resolves. Here, since the director has laid the groundwork for what a corrupt ruler has done to his people, Hamlet knows that action is needed; the voices of the dead tell him. He knows also that he can't just unleash chaos and leave it for someone potentially worse to come along, but needs to own it. Even Shakespeare's play, although it ends on a completely different note, nonetheless has a similar message that Hamlet's story must serve as an example to others.

What also helped the opera work so well in the Buxton International Festival production was a balanced restraint in the set designs and presentation. For the most part the drama takes place on narrow platforms on a wide staircase. It looked like Sami Fendall's set designs would be inadequate for such an epic drama but - a little like Olivier Py's production of this opera - it recognises that the real drama in Hamlet is an interior struggle. As such, Jake Wiltshire's hugely effective lighting and swirling mists provided a great deal of support to make Thomas's score feel much more ominous than it might have otherwise. There were however additional touches where required; a slatted wall a cage where Hamlet prowled like a tiger unable to pounce on his vulnerable uncle, and the riverbank scene for Ophelia; both scenes simple but effective. The underlying menace was ever present in the US ICE-like immigration military troops maintaining order by rounding up protestors and troublemakers.

Conducted by Buxton's musical director Adrian Kelly, the festival orchestra gave a balanced reading of the score with no inappropriate Verdi-like bursts of thunder. Instead, the flowing melodies and the dramatic accompaniment of the score were allowed to work within the context of the stage production to achieve the necessary impact. Best of all was the singing. There was well-deserved acclaim for Yewon Han's Ophélie. She very much has a key role in the opera and not just a scene stealing role despite being written to appeal to a French audience in thrall to the character, but here the role was dramatically coherent and, as sung by Yewon Han, vocally effective. Allison Cook was excellent as Gertrude. Often the victim of Hamlet's anger and abuse, she rose to the challenge of the role and you really felt Gertrude's conflicted position. Alastair Miles is still one of the best bass singers in the UK and was outstanding as Claudius. Gregory Feldmann's intensely delivered soliloquies as Hamlet were met with surprising silence during the performance. That was more of an indication that they were too raw, too real, and it seemed rude to intrude upon his grief with applause that would have broken the spell. At the curtain call however he received and deserved every plaudit and cheer.

I haven't had a lot of time for Thomas's Hamlet up to now, but to be fair it is not performed that often and as an opera it has to compete with one of the greatest plays in the English language, in French moreover and in a grand opéra format, so the challenges are considerable. The production I saw in Strasbourg in 2011 appeared to have been heavily cut and seemed to me disjointed and I couldn't get past what had been done to Shakespeare's poetry and dramatic drive, As an actor himself, Olivier Py showed that there was considerably more you could do with the work in his 2014 production for at La Monnaie in Brussels, but Jack Furness and Buxton have proved again that neglected works with perceived flaws can have those weaknesses turned into strengths. What they do here in opera terms is what any dramatic presentation should do when confronted with a complex work like Hamlet, which is make it feel vital, relevant and relatable. And any production of Hamlet whether theatrical or operatic should have you gripped, shocked and impressed, and this superb production at Buxton did just that.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Thomas - Le Songe d’une nuit d’été (Wexford, 2021)

Ambroise Thomas - Le Songe d’une nuit d’été

Wexford Festival Opera, 2021

Guillaume Tourniaire, Stefania Panighini, Hasmik Torosyan, Valentina Mastrangelo, Sébastien Guèze, Tommaso Barea, Vasyl Solodkyy, Rory Dunne, Kathleen Norchi

National Opera House, O'Reilly Theatre, Wexford - 20th October 2021

As far as this year's Wexford Festival Opera's 'Shakespeare in the Heart' programme is concerned, the opening night opera, Catalani's Edmea, had only a tenuous bordering on non-existent connection with Shakespeare, but if you thought you might get something closer to an adaptation of an original Shakespeare drama with Le Songe d'une nuit d'été, you'd be in for a surprise. Or maybe not considering it is Ambroise Thomas whose Hamlet with a happy ending is somewhat free in its interpretation of that great drama. Le Songe d'une nuit d'été even more so, since in fact it isn't actually an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream at all. What it is however is a charming and entertaining tribute to Shakespeare with considerable musical and melodic qualities, which is the least that you can expect from Thomas.

Le Songe d'une nuit d'été is kind of like Thomas's version of Upstart Crow or Shakespeare in Love, a playful look at who Shakespeare, the man we know so little about, might have been; a genius certainly but one who from the content and depth of character in his own works, you might have expect to be someone with his own lived through troubles. Thomas doesn't dig too deeply or take that duty terribly seriously; William Shakespeare here is no Macbeth or Hamlet, and an opéra-comique is no place for a character that dark. Thomas's opera depicts Shakespeare as more of a Falstaff, and he even includes Shakespeare's fictional comic character in Le Songe, seen here preparing a feast for the playwright who is going a little bit drunkenly off the rails.

He's not the only person concerned about Shakespeare. Well, concerned is probably not the word to describe Falstaff's preoccupations, the rotund braggart more hopeful that the party might bring some attractive women. And indeed it's the two women who he flirts with who actually have Shakespeare's best interests at heart. Queen Elizabeth I and her lady Olivia have come to the tavern, disguised in masks of course, to see for themselves the current troubling state of the playwright, hoping to find a way to bring the great poet back to his calling. Shakespeare's behaviour however only becomes more unstable with their intervention, as it only introduces feelings of jealousy in his friend Lord Latimer, who is in love with Olivia and suspicious of her being at the tavern. After William passes out in a drunken stupor, a letter from the Queen commands Falstaff to bring him to the palace in Richmond Park.

What passes in Richmond Park then does indeed seem like some kind of Midsummer Night's Dream to the still befuddled Shakespeare, causing only further doubts and insecurities when he suspects that the mysterious genie who claims to be his muse is actually the Queen. And is she actually showing romantic inclination towards him? With all the confusion over identities and intentions caused by all these disguised furtive goings-on in the dark, there is a feeling that this is more of a case of Much Ado about Nothing, even as the jealousies roused have the unfortunate result of provoking a duel between Shakespeare and Latimer.

There's little then for the third act to do than just unravel the whole mystery and get Shakespeare back to his writing desk with his pen. I'm not sure of the timeline used in this fiction, since the references made suggest that most of the great Shakespeare plays have already been written before this crisis, but even if the Queen's intervention only serves to brings out the late romances, then it's a result and we should be thankful of a job well done.

And a job well done as far as Ambroise Thomas is concerned. As charming as they are and although there are excetions, I'm fairly immune or perhaps ambivalent to a lot of 19th century French opera and opéra-comique. Thomas, like Berlioz (Les Troyens excepted), Gounod (Faust excepted), Offenbach and Massenet (Werther and Don Quixote very much excepted) all offer charming but largely inconsequential light opera entertainment. They are enjoyable for as long as you listen to them and can certainly impress when they are well staged, but most touch only fleetingly and superficially on any real human situations and leave little in the way of a lasting impression. They rather seem more concerned with providing skillful musical entertainments to the conventional arrangements and situations to the expectations of the audience of their time. That's not to take away anything from the quality of the musical composition however, and those qualities are evident in Le Songe d'une nuit d'été.

Make no mistake about it, while it has many of the characteristics of an opéra-comique in terms of characterisation, situations and arrangement of musical pieces, Le Songe d'une nuit d'été is of a higher standard altogether. Certainly as far as it is expertly played in Wexford. The Act I tavern scene gives plenty of opportunity for Thomas to shine, with Falstaff's men providing a bright lively chorus for the drinking celebrations. There are also plenty of opportunities given for the singers to show what they can do, particularly the Elizabeth I role which is impressively taken here by Armenian mezzo-soprano Hasmik Torosyan with an almost Queen of the Night authority and coloratura range. It's a terrific cast all around in fact, the soprano role of Olivia (a superb Valentina Mastrangelo) no less brightly and challenging scored, Tommaso Barrea is also notable in his characterisation of Falstaff as a swaggering self-sure peacock rather than the usual overweight butt of everyone's jokes. Sébastien Guèze and Vasyl Solodkyy as William Shakespeare and Lord Latimer also delivered everything that was required here.

The musical interpretation and performance was also of an exceptionally high quality. It was conducted marvellously by Guillaume Tourniaire with an orchestra "reduced to accommodate the COVID-19 safety requirements". Again, as with Edmea, this had no noticeable impact on the performance and managed to completely convey the sheer melodic richness and drive of Thomas's score. The idea of taking advantage of the reduced seating to arrange the chorus in the lower side stalls - female left, male right - also worked to the advantage of the production, boosting the sound out in surround to the O'Reilly theatre, letting the audience in on the playfulness of it all.

The idea employed for the stage design (the production billed as semi-staged) was also simple but effective, director Stefania Panighini seeming to try to encapsulate the production into the period of its composition as the opera is indeed more of its own time than Elizabethan. Playing to the behind the scenes nature of the opera, it however bookended this as a modern day company putting on an 18th century version of the opera, so you could see the cast meeting and greeting, taking a group selfie, the crew making adjustments to sets and costumes during the overture. That might have been taking things to a remove too far, but Panighini didn't over-extend this idea, leaving the work to play to its own strengths. I'm not sure about set designer Tiziano Santi's Rothko backdrops, but the simple sets for each act were also effective and all that was needed to have the pleasure of experiencing another Ambroise Thomas rarity that we might never get the opportunity to see again.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera

Thomas - Hamlet

Ambroise Thomas - Hamlet

La Monnaie - De Munt, Brussels 2013

Marc Minkowski, Olivier Py, Vincent Le Texier, Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo, Stéphane Degout, Till Fechner, Lenneke Ruiten, Rémy Mathieu, Henk Neven, Gijs Van der Linden, Jérôme Varnier

France TV Culturebox, La Monnaie - Internet Streaming

It's fairly evident that Ambroise Thomas's opera version of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' is far from faithful to the original. As I've noted myself elsewhere, while it starts out with good intentions it quite literally loses the plot half-way through and becomes more a case of 'Scenes inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet'. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and indeed if there were any way of conveying the essence of 'Hamlet' as music theatre, it's probably best achieved in the style of a 5-Act Grand Opera. Much depends however on the stage direction being strong enough to make up for the liberties Barbier and Carré take with the plot and characterisation. Directed by Oliver Py, La Monnaie's production takes a few liberties itself but manages nonetheless to make a strong case for the work.

Shakespeare purists might balk at the idea, but for Hamlet to fit into a grand opera template, it requires considerable pruning and some reordering of events. There's no ghostly apparition on the battlement of Elsinor castle at the opening here, for example. That regular feature of the grand opera tradition is saved to be employed for effect later when Hamlet himself witnesses it in the second scene of Act I. Before that we have a huge joyous celebration with chorus for the wedding of Claudius to Gertrude, a scene that is in marked contrast with Hamlet's gloomy disposition and his speech about the inconstancy of women. We also have a love scene between Hamlet and Ophelia, and a display of friendship between Hamlet and Laertes. Then we finally get the big scene where Hamlet learns from the ghost of his dead father of the deed most foul committed by his brother.

That's a great way to compositionally reorder the scenes for an opera, introducing all the characters, displaying a wide variety of emotions with arias and duets in a standard series of numbers and set-pieces, achieving the necessary impact without straying too far away from the intentions of the drama (even if the 19th century French language isn't quite as rich as Shakespeare's Elizabethan verse). It's particularly effective in Oliver Py's staging of the work (the 2013 revival of the production directed here by Andreas Zimmermann). Py's regular collaborator, set and costume designer Pierre-André Weitz, provides an ingenious subterranean labyrinthine construction of revolving and shifting staircases that resembles something out of an MC Escher puzzle, an impossible architecture of dark recesses that reflect the mindset of the characters.

All the characters are a mass of neuroses here, not just Hamlet - although is always remains possible that everything we see and how it plays out is just a reflection of Hamlet's disturbed mind. When we first encounter him in this production it's descending a staircase while cutting lacerations into his own chest and arms. Deeply affected by the death of his father, he's prepared to see conspiracy everywhere in the world, in the murder of his father. Even Ophelia and his mother's attempts to lighten his disposition are met with suspicion and mistrust. Hamlet however, particularly in this production, seems to be marked by a sense of futility to change events. His direction of the drama of the travelling players can be seen in this light, either an attempt to make the world and events conform to his dark personal view or as an indirect and impotent revolt against it.

Perhaps reflecting the state of Hamlet's troubled mind, Claudius and Gertrude are first seen stumbling down the same staircase as Hamlet, unsure of their footing. During the apparition of the ghost of his father, Claudius stumbles onto the stage in a drunken stupor, Gertrude laughs wantonly and Ophelia appears surrounded by shirtless men wearing masks who also torment her (or seduce her) during her death scene. There's plenty of room for such ambiguities in Hamlet, and Py makes the most of them without going too far overboard. Well, not often anyway. There are certainly some Freudian issues that can be played upon in the play, but some might find an entirely naked Hamlet being bathed by his mother before wrestling her to the ground and then dunking her under the water a little bit pointless.

As conventional as the arrangements often are (barring the unusual employment of a saxophone solo in the travelling players scene), the subject is nonetheless well handled by Ambroise Thomas, who matches the music and the numbers with the tone of the drama. As if the saxophone is some kind of indication however, things start to go a little wayward following the reenactment of Claudius' crime in 'The Murder of Gonzago'. It's as if after everything has been brought out into the open and laid bare the characters have nothing more to do but recoil at the horror of it all. Any further progression of the plot kind of grinds to a halt while the subsequent numbers are played out in the final acts. There's a disproportionate amount of time given over for example to Ophelia's mad scene, evidently to fill-out the soprano role, but also to satisfy the French mania of the period for this character.

Stéphane Degout has some uncommon challenges when singing the role of Hamlet, including singing a major aria entirely naked, but he copes admirably. Degout is making Hamlet very much his own much the same way that he is with Pelléas, singing these key French baritone roles with the required delicate lyric romanticism underpinned with a commanding strength of purpose. The same could be said about Vincent Le Texier's command of key bass roles in the French repertoire, bringing depth and character to Claudius here in the same way that he tackles Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande. Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo is not so strong, a little wobbly in places, but she has a good voice and likewise copes well with some of the challenges of the staging, like having her head shoved into bathwater.

Key to the success of the production as a whole however, considering the emphasis that her character has in this version of Shakespeare's work, is the wonderful performance from Dutch soprano Lenneke Ruiten as Ophelia. Her French enunciation is excellent, her delivery flowing, her high notes expressive and well pitched. Equally important is the conducting of Marc Minkowski which brings a dramatic consistency to the work. This is perhaps achieved with some judicious cuts to the ballets and other excesses (I'm not familiar with the uncut version of the work), but it helps that there are no obvious divisions between the acts, the drama allowed to flow from scene to scene through the fine set designs, with the instrumental interludes used to connect and retain the mood.

Recorded at La Monnaie-De Munt on the 13th and 17th December 2013, Hamlet can be viewed for a limited time via on-line streaming from France Television's Culturebox site or through the La Monnaie streaming service. There are no English subtitles available on any of these platforms, but there are also no location restrictions on viewing.

Thomas - Mignon

Ambroise Thomas - Mignon

Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2012

Frédéric Chaslin, Jean-Louis Benoît, Sophie Koch, Paolo Fanale, Diana Damrau, Nicolas Courjal, Carine Séchaye, Emilio Pons, Frédéric Goncalves, Laurent Delvert

Geneva, 16 May 2012

There seems to have been some initial confusion over whether Mignon was destined to be a grand opera or an opéra comique. The libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré was first offered to Meyerbeer, who refused it, then Gounod, before being taken on by Ambroise Thomas now in his 50s at the time of writing in 1866, as a commission for the Opéra Comique in Paris. Based on Goethe’s famous Bildungsroman, ‘The Apprentice Years of Wilhelm Meister’ (1795), there were however certain changes that required that altered the original intentions of the work, such as expanding the role of Philine for a lyric soprano and rewriting the ending from the tragic conclusion of the original. Whatever the intentions of the original librettists, Thomas found a perfect expression for the work in the lighter of the two opera styles, composing with pleasant melodies as well as with delicacy for the emotional content and Mignon was a great success, the greatest of his career thus far (two years before his next success in Hamlet), the work even surviving past the fire that destroyed the Salle Favart in 1887 to run beyond a 1000 performances in Paris.

Those qualities in Thomas’s writing, particularly in the characterisation assigned to each of the main roles, was certainly evident in the 2012 revival production of the opera at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, which benefitted moreover from the outstanding casting of the French mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch in the title role of Mignon. A young innocent of indeterminate gender who has been brought up by gypsies, Mignon has been forced to perform what seems to be a rather humiliating egg dance for the public, finally refusing to continue any longer at a show in the courtyard of a country inn where Wilhelm Meister is present. Taking pity on her predicament and attracted to the ambiguous nature of this strange creature dressed in boyish clothes, Wilhelm buys her freedom from Jarno, the leader of the gypsies. To protect her from the attentions of a crazed troubadour, Lothario, mad from the loss of his daughter, Wilhelm allows Mignon to accompany him as his page.

References to such figures, many derived from Goethe’s Mignon, are common in literature in figures such as Lolita as well as in the cinema - Gelsomina in Fellini’s La Strada, for example - but some such as Lulu have also travelled through to opera and continue to exercise the same strange fascination. In some respects, the Mignon figure, looking for a father-figure, a lover, a husband, contains a purity which can inspire the artist (who can forget the poetic raptures of Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita?), but the same figure can also reflect darker and more ambiguous impulses that are protective and dangerously possessive. It’s perfect material for musical and poetical expression, but while there is a great deal of such qualities in Thomas’s writing, his opera Mignon perhaps doesn’t always reflect both sides of the coin with equal success. It’s a lovely little opera to listen to, but perhaps a little old-fashioned and restricted in this respect by the conventions of the opéra comiquestyle.

It could be enlivened certainly through inventive stage direction and perhaps an updating of the settings, but there was nothing like that in Jean-Louis Benoît’s production for Geneva. If the props however were reduced to a bare minimum on the stage, it was to leave all the more room for it to be filled with singers and chorus, all dressed in fine, period costumes. A little character was introduced with a humorous setting up of chairs which became a game of skittles every time someone made a rushed entrance to the stage through them, and there was a minor skit involving the flames that destroy Baron Rosemburg’s castle at the end of the second act, but little else of note to suggest a theme or concept being explored. Even so, with the fine costume designs and the actual stage direction - Diana Damrau in particular being a swirling, sparkling presence as Philine - the production looked well and was never less than effective for the purposes of a traditional, theatrical presentation.

It was left to the singers to bring whatever they could to the roles through the performances. Sophie Koch brought a fabulous air of wistful melancholy to the famous aria ‘Connais-tu le pays où fleurent l’oranger?/Le pays des fruits d’or et les roses vermeilles?’ (“Do you know the land where orange flowers bloom?/A land of golden fruit and crimson roses?”), which along with her boyish appearance, lent some interesting ambiguity to the androgynous character and how she is perceived by both Wilhelm and Lothario. There was a hint here of other depths that could be explored, but neither Thomas’s music not the direction seemed capable of drawing anything more out of this as the performance progressed. Koch however was fabulous in the role, singing a choice mezzo-soprano role wonderfully. Taking on a broad range of roles that stretch from this light lyrical opéra comique to heavier Wagner roles, there really doesn’t seem to be anything she isn’t capable of, and she sounds more and more impressive each time I hear her.

It was a double luxury then to also have Diana Damrau as Philine in this production. She played a crucial part in the success of the production, and her role is also crucial to making the opera work so well. Her flowing coloratura in the soprano range certainly adds considerable colour to the range of voices as well as some well-needed sparkle to a story that lacks the depth that it might have acquired in a tragic grand opera style, but there’s much more to her character than that and the role serves a vital dramatic function. Philine, along with sidekick Laërte as the leaders of a bohemian troupe of actors, is the catalyst that brings Wilhelm Meister and Mignon together, but Philine also has other outgoing feminine qualities and her flirting introduces the necessary element of conflict that pushes the romantic element to the fore. Her extravagant character and the extravagant singing that goes along with it were well-served here by Diana Damrau. Her ‘Je suis Titania la blonde’ polonaise, given after a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the baron’s castle, was every bit as rivetting and magnetic as it ought to be.

The two exceptionally talented leading ladies were well supported by an excellent Paolo Fanale as Wilhelm Meister, by Nicholas Courjal’s beautifully lucid baritone Lothario, and by Emilio Pons as Laërte. All of them sang very well, but none were really able to make much more of the parts beyond the limitations of the original characterisation and within the constraints of the unexceptional stage direction. A good energetic and entertaining performance from Carine Séchaye in the trouser-role of Frédéric also added to the overall quality and dynamic of the singing. Frédéric Chaslin conducted the orchestra of the Suisse Romande delightfully through Thomas’s lovely score, the production using the original version of the opera with spoken dialogue (only a few short passages) rather than the later revised German version with recitative that, like Thomas’s similar rearrangement of Hamlet, attempted to come closer to the tragic ending for an audience more familiar with the original work. The happy ending however seemed very much in line with the lightness and delicacy of touch that characterised the whole production here in Geneva.

Thomas - Hamlet

Ambroise Thomas - Hamlet

Opéra National du Rhin

Patrick Fournillier, Vincent Boussard, Stéphane Degout, Ana Camelia Stefanescu, Marie-Ange Todorovitch, Nicolas Cavallier, Christophe Berry, Vincent Pavesi, Mark Van Arsdale, Jean-Gabriel Saint-Martin, Dimitri Pkhaladze

Strasbourg, France - 26 June 2011

To be or not to be... an opera... that is the question.

That’s a bit of a predictable way to start a review of Ambroise Thomas’ opera version of Hamlet, but it’s still a relevant question that has divided opera-goers for years. Your view on that is likely to depend on whether you are an English-speaker and familiar with the Shakespeare drama or otherwise, and if you are more attuned to the traditions of French grand opera. The problem with Shakespeare in French – even though his work is venerated there almost as much as in the UK – is that it’s not really Shakespeare. In French it has none of the poetry of his Elizabethan period verse, and it translated into a rather prosaic, ordinary, commonplace (I know these all mean the same thing, I’m just listing them for effect) French that is almost indistinguishable from how modern French is spoken.

Adapting Shakespeare to opera is not without its problems either, but there are plenty of examples from Berlioz to Wagner, but most notably Rossini and Verdi, to indicate that there’s no reason why a lyrical presentation of the Bard’s dramas can’t work, and in some cases… dare I say it… even improve on the original. Well, maybe not improve, but there are certainly examples, such as Iago’s Credo in Verdi’s Otello, where the original elements are expanded upon to superb effect, but it’s hard to see how even the Gesamtkunstwerk nature of opera can add much that isn’t already contained within the original Shakespearean drama.

Particularly Hamlet, which in my view, and many others, is the greatest drama ever written. I may have been biased from the outset then, but, never having had the opportunity before to see Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet – or indeed anything by one of France’s most respected if little-known composers – I was keen to take the opportunity to see it performed on French soil in Strasbourg. Ambroise Thomas’ works are rarely performed, with only Hamlet and Mignon staged with any kind of regularity in France, but even here at the Opéra National du Rhin, Hamlet was billed as a rare classic rediscovered. Try as I might however, I couldn’t get the original text out of my head as the rather drab, colourless, dull (yes, for effect) and prosaic French libretto singularly failed to bring the drama and the poetry to life.

Act I and II set out the dramatic content of the opera. It opens with the marriage of Gertrude to Claudius (a invented scene not in the original, but effective enough to establish the context of the drama) two months after his brother King Hamlet’s death, and is then followed by the appearance of the ghost of the father talking to his son Prince Hamlet, telling him that he was poisoned by Claudius and that he must be avenged (“but go easy on Gertrude”, he bizarrely warns), and Act II ends with the travelling players re-enacting the crime (strangely and confusingly in this production, implicating the real people into the drama and not leaving much room for ambiguity).

Musically, it’s hard to find anything attractive about the early scenes, the score conventional and dull, full of old-fashioned academicism that has little relation to the dramatic tone or context of the piece, with one-note continuo during speaking sections and only the chorus coming in from time to time to add dramatic emphasis. Any attempts at originality are quite eccentric, such as a solo saxophone at one point. The staging at Strasbourg Opéra didn’t really find any interesting way to make this come to life (the appearance of the King’s ghost walking vertically down a wall notwithstanding), with a generic Court setting that never changed, with variation only in the lighting – but it did at least keep the dramatic action fluid.

Act III and IV however, post interval, present a totally different side to the opera, putting aside the exposition of the dramatic plot and allowing the emotional tone to find its own footing through some lovely duets and arias – in Hamlet’s confrontation with the Queen, and particularly in Ophelia’s extended lament and death scene. It becomes more like scenes from Hamlet (or inspired by Hamlet) set to music, and it certainly kills the plot progression stone dead, but the musical qualities work in favour of the opera and this is certainly preferable to the dreary dramatisation of the first half. As wonderful as this might be, it comes at the cost of the excision of some important and famous scenes, with several of the characters given short shrift. Laertes has a walk-on/walk-off part (pointlessly wandering through the dramatic scene between Hamlet and Ophelia with a suitcase at one point in this production), there are no Rosencrantz or Guildenstern (not a loss really), and alas, poor Yorick’s name is forgotten by the gravediggers, giving Hamlet no opportunity to pose with a skull and meditate upon life (although he does so here, and quite effectively, in relation to Ophelia’s death). Even Polonius is reduced to a bit-part of about three lines, playing no significant part in the drama, and consequently coming out of the drama alive!

As do many other characters, for Thomas and his librettists Michel Carré and Jules Barbier (taken admittedly from a reworking of the drama by Alexandre Dumas) – suddenly realise that they need to find a way to quickly wrap-up this non-drama. Shakespeare is thrown out the window and instead they tack on their own ending where the ghost of the dead King appears before the assembled guests, hands a knife to Hamlet and tells him to get on with it (“but don’t forget, go easy on your mother”). Hamlet duly obliges, despatching Claudius before himself expiring over the grave of Ophelia. To say I was bemused at the finale would be an understatement – flabberghasted, perhaps – and this is the revised version of the opera that was forced upon Thomas for the English permiere of the opera, as it was felt that the English audience wouldn’t accept the happy ending in the original version where Hamlet lives on and is crowned King! Putting Shakespeare aside however – and the developments of Act III and IV are such a thoroughly enjoyable musical experience that one is finally able to do this – it was a however a dramatically effective conclusion.

It helped that the singing at Strasbourg was of a fairly high standard. Hamlet is a baritone role, which one feels it should be even though it’s not a great operatic role (he’s even upstaged by Ophelia), but we had Stéphane Degout here (who I’ve previously seen doing Rameau) and he was in fine voice, as was Nicolas Cavallier in the bass role of Claudius. Hamlet of course notes that women are fickle and inconstant, and there was some inconsistency to the Romanian Ana Camelia Stefanescu as Ophelia, and Marie-Ange Todorovitch’s Gertrude, but they were mainly hampered by the dramatic expression of the first two acts and both came through to excellent effect in the final two acts, particularly in Ophelia’s beautifully heartfelt lament. Despite the liberties taken with Shakespeare’s verse and characterisation then, and despite some conservative grand opera tedium in the drama of the first half, and with the help of some judicious pruning by Patrick Fournillier of the opera’s ballet sequences, Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet proved to be such an experience that one can see why the opera remains popular in France, as well as why it’s not so highly thought of elsewhere.