Glyndebourne 2017: Hamlet
Mon 18 Sep 2017Shakespeare has been a fertile source of inspiration for opera – whether that’s Verdi’s Falstaff and Otello, or Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This year, Glyndebourne has got in on the act, with an entirely new operatic version of the Bard’s greatest tragedy, composed by Australian Brett Dean.
It’s only Dean’s second ever opera (although he’s had a long career as a classical musician and composer) and the first time in almost a decade that Glyndebourne has commissioned a new opera, so expectations of it were high.
I will assume for the purposes of this blog the story of Hamlet is familiar to everyone (you know, King dies, Queen marries brother-in-law, dead King appears to son as ghost to say he was murdered by said brother, etc, etc) and move on to the operatic version, which may challenge some Shakespeare purists – librettist (operatic term for the person who writes the words, as opposed to the music) Matthew Jocelyn has stripped away some four fifths of the text, to give the score room to breath, and even re-assigned some of the remaining text to different characters, to the extent that the line ‘To be or not to be’ is actually delivered by the Player King, not Hamlet himself.
Photo by Richard Hubert Smith
Despite – or perhaps because of – the liberties taken with the original text, the opera has been extremely well-received by critics. The Guardian felt that Dean “rises to the challenge” set by Shakespeare and The Sunday Times described it as “the operatic event of the year.” The Telegraph said Dean’s music “offers great brilliance” and described the audience as “roaring”their approval. The Independent described Dean as having “an absolutely sure touch with drama,” whilst The Times simply said, “don’t miss it” – we couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
Glyndebourne 2017: Hamlet: Friday 3 November