Brett Dean’s new opera for Glyndebourne is a big-hearted romantic comedy, sunny and life-affirming. Only joking — this is contemporary opera, after all. It’s about the usual stuff: neurosis, violence and toxic sexuality. Those seem to be the emotions most naturally suited to the language of mainstream contemporary classical music, and Dean speaks that language as brilliantly as Richard Strauss handled the idiom of an earlier generation. Whatever else this operatic adaptation of Hamlet might be, it’s a polished piece of work.
That takes some doing: Shakespeare isn’t naturally suited to the opera house. It was Verdi’s librettist Boito who first realised that the best way to retain the essence of Shakespeare while still leaving room for a composer is to dismantle the play and rebuild it on operatic terms. Dean’s librettist Matthew Jocelyn has done precisely that, trimming and reassembling Shakespeare’s text to zip efficiently through all the bits you can remember of Hamlet’s multiple plotlines, and playing some ingenious little games along the way. ‘To be or not to be’ is hinted at by the Prince but finally delivered, piecemeal, by the Players. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (cast as a pair of preening countertenors) are merged with Osric, and are therefore present at the end to be slaughtered by Hamlet himself, and very satisfyingly too.
Dean has done the rest, with a score whose glinting textures, shattering climaxes and queasy, deliquescent microtonal slides generate a powerful sense of something rotten in the fabric of this opera’s world. As you’d expect from Dean, it’s wondrously refined. An unseen chorus (distinct from some powerful choral crowd scenes on stage) smudges the orchestration while electronics generate unexpected thuds and rumbles around the auditorium — all suitably unsettling.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in