Watching the Met's presentation of the Ambroise Thomas Hamlet the other night, I remembered the little Shakespeare Company that found itself stuck with the task of introducing the Bard to the locals down at Waycross, GA. The actors weren't at all sure they sell the poet to the yokels but as the curtain went down the audience went wild with cries of "Author! Author!" The company didn't know what to do but the audience kept shouting for the author, so at last the manager collared a bit player, slapped a wig on him and pushed him out onto the stage. And the audience shot him.
Translated: everything is right about this Met Hamlet, with one exception: the music, the score. Grant that Thomas is a well-schooled technician, comfortable with the operatic conventions. The trouble is that he just doesn't have an original musical idea in his head--or if he did, he kept them well concealed from the audience in Paris, where Hamlet opened in 1868. Apparently it was a huge hit in its own time, but if this is what the Paris audience wanted, then it's no wonder that the German Army walked all over them at Sedan in 1870 (for a more charitable view, go here).
I said "one exception." Well, one and a half. Aside from the score,l Hamlet is crippled by the grotesquely limited 19th-Century conception of Hamlet himself as a poor put-upon innocent, capturing almost none of the richness and variety of the characterization. Thomas is hardly alone in this, of course; indeed one of the marvels of Shakespearean history is that Hamlet has endured and even survived so many rotten interpretations. Contrast, say, Handel's Messiah which, even when terrible is still pretty good.
At any rate these two constraints conspire together to provide what could have been a tooth-grindingly boring evening were it not for (in particular) Simon Keenlyside in the title role. He's at once a superb singer and a superb actor and indeed I'd have to concede that it says something for the role that Keenlyside has come back and back to it since 1996 (there's a DVD version from Barcelona). In a Met interview Keenlyside did mention a good technical reason why a baritone might enjoy it (high tessatura), together, also acknowledging that he enjoys the chance for a bit of melodrama.
As Ophelia, Marlis Petersen did well enough that you've got to hope she will soon escape the sobriquet of "replacing Natalie Dessay who is ill." A lot of critics treat the Ophelia role as one of the worst things about the opera--too hammy and insufficiently motivated. Actually, for all my whining I rather liked it. You've got to grant the conventions of 19th-Century mad scenes and it does run a bit long. But the characterization was not quite as fingernails-on-chalkboard as the Prince himself and so easier to enjoy.
BTW this was a big week for overblown Frenchiness. A couple of nights before, we took in the production of Charbrier's l'Etoile next door at the New York City opera. It's got the same problem: Charbrier, though also well schooled in his craft, is an even less inventive musician than Thomas. But the staging was fun and the singers knew how to play it for yucks, so everybody had a pretty good time. I found myself diverting my mind by putting him in the context of his times:
I should add that while I think both these performances had holes in the center, still I'm not sorry I went, and I don't think it was a mistake for the Met (or the NYCO) to stage them. You've got to try different stuff, you've got to explore. I mean, how many Carmens can you watch in a lifetime? Okay, quite a few, but still...
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