Hamlet (Brett Dean) at Glyndebourne

[Dave2002]

I watched some of this but felt about it exactly what I felt about the Searle version when I saw it at the Garden: the music adds nothing and takes away a very great deal: I'm afraid I just don't see the point of setting such a powerful text to music that can't match, let alone enhance, the emotional impact of the drama. But I have to admit that contemporary music doesn't speak to me in any genre so presumably the fault - and the loss - is mine.

I recorded it on my pvr, but haven't watched any of it yet. Perhaps it's not for you at all, but I did warn you that it might not work on TV. I may feel the same as I watch it later on in the week. There are also other pieces of music which really don't work well at all in recordings - not just modern works. Thanks for trying, anyway.

[Bert Coules]

I don't think it was the fact of being on TV that was the problem: I believe I would have reacted the same way in the theatre. Actually, TV enhanced the experience because the subtitles made the text clearer - when I saw the Searle I remember just wanting the music to shut up so I could hear the words. This was particularly important tonight because the piece uses in part (and perhaps more than that) the rarely-performed first quarto text.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But I have to admit that contemporary music doesn't speak to me

You were in luck, then, Bert - there wasn't any involved in this production. Instead, we got the same sort of generic operatic stuff that a certain type of British composer has been writing for the last thirty years. (Usually these in their late thirties/early forties who felt - or their publishers felt - that they'd reached a stage in their careers when they really ought to write something large-scale for the Stage. Think Nigel Osborne's Electrification of the Soviet Union, John Casken's Golem, Robert Saxton's Caritas - that sort of thing.)

Pfff ... mmnnyers ... well ... sheeesh ... hmmmm ...

It wasn't "bad", but it was far from very good Musically, and the staging was little better than that of an undergrad Theatre Studies course production (with a bit more expensive machinery) - and the alterations to the text nothing like as insightful or shocking as what Marowitz did to it fifty years ago! The sort of "modern" opera to keep the Glyndebourne regulars titilated with the idea that they'd seen a "contemporary" work, without disturbing their enjoyment of Rossini and Mozart.

I found it predictable - but its success (together with the Ades' Exterminating Angel at Covent Garden last year) might revive an interest in some of those operas from the '80s - which also weren't all "bad" - and the Osborne was certainly much better than this Dean.

[Bert Coules]

Ah, but contemporary music began about sixty years ago, by my reckoning.

I've watched a bit more now: as you say, the alterations to the text were annoying rather than insightful, and a modern-dress Hamlet is now no more than a well-worn cliché.

I did smile at one moment: the queen's description of Hamlet during the final duel - "He's fat and scant of breath" - is often altered these days to "He's hot..." or "He's faint..."; here, where the original line would have been perfectly justified, it was dutifully changed nonetheless. What's more, poor Gertrude actually came out with "He's scant and faint of breath" - presumably a slip rather than a deliberate rewrite but an interesting variation in either case.

[kernelbogey]

i have added the composer's name to the thread title, since it had appeared nowhere in the thread .

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

i have added the composer's name to the thread title, since it had appeared nowhere in the thread .

- thanks, kb. (I hadn't noticed )

[Bryn]

i have added the composer's name to the thread title, since it had appeared nowhere in the thread .

Thanks. Must admit I had passed over the thread, assuming it was about the Thomas work.

[agingjb]

I wonder what I would make of this if I were not familiar with the play.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder what I would make of this if I were not familiar with the play.

This is an interesting point, isn't it - the play is such an important part of the cultural landscape (and has been for centuries) that any stage performance must be "weighed in the balance" with previous productions, let alone an operatic treatment. Personally, I would have preferred a much more incisive "deconstruction" of the text (a la Marowitz, or even Aperghis' Hamletmachine) to liberate it from the simple "story-setting" that was the basis of this production (from the start, so that the audience could keep a grasp of the events, even if they weren't thrilled by the Music).

But that also makes me wonder how much this was a concern for audiences of previous operas - how well did Verdi's audiences know La Dame aux Camélias when they went to see the first performances of La Traviata - and did their expectations thereof have an influence on the poor reception of the opera amongst some of the audience? (And for Puccini, many of whose operas were based on previously well-known plays or stories - and, in the case of Manon Lescaut, an already well-known previous operatic setting)?

I wonder what would have been the result if Dean and Jocelyn had chosen The Spanish Tragedy as the basis of their work.

[Richard Barrett]

Personally, I would have preferred a much more incisive "deconstruction" of the text (a la Marowitz, or even Aperghis' Hamletmachine) to liberate it from the simple "story-setting" that was the basis of this production (...) I wonder what would have been the result if Dean and Jocelyn had chosen The Spanish Tragedy as the basis of their work.

Surely almost everyone is going to feel let down by a "straight" operatic treatment of Shakespeare. Such a "cultural icon" of a text is going to be cut by maybe 75% and/or reworked in ways that mangle Shakespeare's words, and you probably won't be able to hear them clearly anyway, and what you get in return is (almost inevitably) music that fails to offer any new angle on or insight into the text, let alone its position as cultural phenomenon. I'm an admirer of Aribert Reimann's 1976 opera Lear, but there the narrative is a lot more straightforward and less ambiguous than Hamlet, being founded on decisions rather than indecisions, and being in German it avoids the issue of what to do with the original words. The problem is (apart from the "I really ought to write an opera" aspect already mentioned) that it's almost always the least interesting composers, in terms of their ability/preparedness to rethink things from first principles (as opposed to putting another nail in opera's coffin, so to speak), who get taken on for such projects and/or have an interest in realising them...

[Pulcinella]

Surely almost everyone is going to feel let down by a "straight" operatic treatment of Shakespeare.

I'm guessing that you really mean Hamlet here, Richard, rather than Shakespeare in general.

Are people let down by Verdi's Otello or Macbeth?
I'm certainly not by Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream (no comments about that being a "straight" treatment by Britten and Pears, please ).
I haven't seen this Hamlet yet, so must catch up while it's still available.
I can certainly appreciate that some (not just Shakespeare) plays are more suited to being transformed into an opera libretto than others, though.

[Richard Barrett]

Are people let down by Verdi's Otello or Macbeth? I'm certainly not by Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream

While I personally have no time at all for Britten, you're surely right that Verdi isn't generally regarded as a letdown! I guess I'm talking about a more contemporary situation. It's no longer the 19th century (although in the opera house it often seems to be); it's no longer even the 1950s when Britten's opera was written (and was already retrogressive in style and concept).

[Pulcinella]

While I personally have no time at all for Britten, you're surely right that Verdi isn't generally regarded as a letdown! I guess I'm talking about a more contemporary situation. It's no longer the 19th century (although in the opera house it often seems to be); it's no longer even the 1950s when Britten's opera was written (and was already retrogressive in style and concept).

Ah, I thought you were talking more of the complex art of forging a workable libretto from the original play.

[Richard Barrett]

Ah, I thought you were talking more of the complex art of forging a workable libretto from the original play.

Well there is that too, although I feel that a libretto should be better than "workable", one expects more than that of the music after all! I'm not of the opinion that a libretto should be just a string of singable words to hang the music on. OTOH I've never really understood why Hamlet has the place it does in (especially English-speaking) culture. It's never done much for me in comparison with other works of Shakespeare. So everything I say is in that context too!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Are people let down by Verdi's Otello or Macbeth?

But they aren't settings of Shakespeare - they're settings of Boito and Piave, after Shakespeare (in the same way that Hamlet is "after Kyd").

(Not that original libretti after Shakespeare are guarantors of inspired operas: Ades/Oakes' Tempest does not set Shakespeare.)