HAMLET (Glyndebourne Festival Opera)****

 

By Cal

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKCSZMfkv5k

Available until: Sunday 23^rd August, 9pm

I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy reviewing a version of Hamlet quite so soon after The Show Must Go Online’s magnificent production of Shakespeare’s play, but I reminded myself that an opera is a different medium and probably nearly as different from the play as an Agatha Christie TV adaption is from the actual novel. Actually, the opera was closer to the play than I was expecting, even using Shakespeare’s text, but I did find I was thinking of the opera as a piece on its own merits as an opera, rather than just as a version of the play which inspired it.

There are many things you can say about Hamlet, but one thing most people would agree on is that it’s very long – and the problem with singing is that it usually takes longer than speaking, particularly considering an opera character’s habit of singing everything four times (this happens less often in modern operas, but this one isn’t entirely without repetitions). An opera will necessarily have to cut out some of the twists and turns.

Brett Dean’s Hamlet does have to miss a lot out, but it sticks closely to the plot and despite watching a brilliant Hamlet recently, only one thing stood out as being notably absent – quite an important thing, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Librettist Matthew Jocelyn has skilfully cut and woven together parts of Shakespeare’s text with only the occasional jarring moment, and Dean’s music, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, echoes every swell of emotion in the text, creating music which is beautiful, if not strictly tuneful, and full of suffering.

A lot of the minor characters have been dropped – though two of my favourites, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, remain - but there is an ensemble. The ensemble spend a lot of time standing around, watching, as the characters crumble mentally and physically around them, yet they seem not so much horrified observers as witnesses who see the characters at their most vulnerable. Director Neil Armfield creates busy scenes, yet even when the camera is not providing a close-up, it’s very clear where he wants you to look.

The set is designed by Ralph Meyers and perhaps the most remarkable thing is the way it changes from one place to another without my noticing. An elegant, ornate banquet hall in a beautiful silvery-grey features frequently, complete with chairs and tables, but we also see other parts of the palace, in addition to venturing outside. The close camerawork made me feel as though I was on the stage with the characters, with no distracting shots of the wings to remind me I was actually watching a play (and on my laptop too). It was a very immersive experience.

Hamlet is played by Allan Clayton, who created the role and would have reprised the role in Amsterdam with many of the same cast, were it not for… well, we all know what happened. Clayton’s Hamlet seems slightly unravelled, emotionally and physically, from the start (and not unreasonably so: the idea of my uncle killing my dad and marrying my mum is certainly something I would prefer not to think about, much less live through) running across the dinner table in front of seated guests before fumbling for his words, words, words. Everything that is cut from the play is somehow there in Clayton’s performance as his madness slowly and harrowingly destroys him. His behaviour is sometimes wild and confused, certainly disturbing, but he’s also a desperately tragic figure - like a child who’s crying out for someone to come along and change the plot and make everything all right. (Unluckily for him, this is not Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet. There’s no happy ending here.)

And now we come to the one notable absence. Barbara Hannigan’s ethereal Ophelia is beautifully-sung and compelling to watch but although technically not absent, she was a surprisingly peripheral figure. She has less presence than the other characters and shows signs of floating away right from the start. It’s difficult to get much sense of who she is – and having seen and heard Hannigan before, she is more than capable of making her presence felt so I can only imagine that it was deliberate, perhaps even an attempt to show that she was really out of reach for Hamlet. Her mad scene was sad because nobody wants to see someone in that state and Hannigan went from lethargy to hysteria very convincingly, but I never quite believed in Hamlet and Ophelia as a couple or felt any sadness that they couldn’t be together. I never really felt they were in love with anything more than the idea of each other and saw them more as two separate tragedies that occasionally and briefly collided.

This treatment of Ophelia puts the relationship between Hamlet and Horatio at the heart of the opera – and Horatio, of course, has the advantage of being there literally till the end, holding the dying Hamlet in his arms, understanding and forgiving him everything, loving the Hamlet he was now and not just the person he used to be. It was a very moving performance from Jacques Imbrailo, whose Horatio seems driven by a desire to help Hamlet but having no idea what to do. This relationship exists in the play too, but it seems particularly powerful in this opera, where Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia takes second place.

Rod Gilfry has played a number of comic roles in opera and in musicals and is usually quite loveable, but he is cold and stern as King Claudius, very powerful in voice and manner, every movement purposeful and threatening. As Gertrude, Dame Sarah Connolly is completely different from the bold Giulio Cesare she played in last week’s Glyndebourne offering. In public, Gertrude is mostly quiet and ineffectual and outwardly lacking in personality, as though any emotions are now trapped inside her. It’s only when she’s being a mother that she really comes to life and allows her emotions to break through, her maternal instincts also extending to Ophelia. Yet Connolly’s Gertrude was as powerful a performance as Giulio Cesare, the character is carefully and impeccably created and never fades into the background. She gets our attention and rouses our curiosity and sympathy. And she definitely doesn’t look like a man.

John Tomlinson’s long and distinguished career continues with the assumption of three roles. His Ghost of Hamlet is genuinely terrifying and the fact he also plays Player 1 and the amusing Gravedigger is surprisingly effective – as though the Ghost continues to follow Hamlet around, stealing his sanity (and also his lines – it is Player 1 who says ‘to be or not to be’). Kim Begley’s officious Polonius is one of those characters that irritate you only in the most satisfying way and David Butt Philip is a passionate, dangerous Laertes. His swordfight with Hamlet is so good, I actually found myself wondering what will happen next.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern also make a surprise and welcome appearance and it’s particularly nice that they’re played by two countertenors, Rupert Enticknap and Christopher Lowrey. Countertenors in modern works are not unknown – Britten’s Death in Venice, Jonathan Dove’s Flight and Thomas Ades’ The Tempest come to mind – but even in early music, it’s unusual to see two countertenors operating as a pair as they do here. It sounds beautiful, as well as giving the opera a historical flavour. It’s also appropriate, considering how interchangeable the characters lines’ are, that they should be vocally similar here too. I love the fact that the difficulties in telling the characters apart, hinted at in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and explored further in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, is continued here with the characters’ initially addressed as Rosenstern and Guildencrantz. A nice in-joke for theatre lovers which would also be funny if you don’t know them – it seems quite common for parents not to know their kids’ uni mates!

Another excellent production from Glyndebourne Festival Opera – and the Shakespeare connections will continue next week with The Fairy Queen.