Brilliant new take on Hamlet, potently delivered
Hamlet
Glyndebourne
The first-night audience for Brett Dean’s new opera roared its approval so vociferously that I feel almost shamefaced to confess to any reservations about its success. But few things are more difficult than judging such novelties after one hearing, and I should say at once that this is certainly something that I want to hear again.
Hamlet is a long and sprawling play. Although melodrama and gore flood its climax, it is also the most introverted and meditative of Shakespeare’s tragedies, its psychological richness growing out of a hero paralysed by intellectual inconsistency and uncertainty. Matthew Jocelyn’s libretto, neatly cobbled from Folio and Quarto texts, nips and tucks ruthlessly, eliminating most of Act 4 and the crucial character of Fortinbras in the interests of filmic fluidity and a swift-moving compact narrative that never allows any sense of Hamlet’s inertia or the fetid corruption of Elsinore that imprisons him. The drama holds attention, but lacks heart and soul.
Dean’s music offers great brilliance. Sparely but imaginatively scored, it cleverly exploits the trick of spooky clicking and clattering noises emanating from stray points around the auditorium as well as the wheezing of accordion and ondes martenot. The vocal lines are graceful and expressive if not lyrically memorable, and Dean is rare among contemporary opera composers in understanding how to present people singing together – the forceful duets, ensembles and choruses are highlights of the score, along with the fantasia of a prologue, mashing up fragments of Hamlet’s inner musings, and Ophelia’s thrillingly virtuosic if somewhat protracted mad scene.
Vladimir Jurowski returns to Glyndebourne to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra with his customary laserlike intensity, and the cast is vocally exemplary, with stellar performances from Allan Clayton acting his socks off in the title role, Barbara Hannigan an eerily glamorous Ophelia and John Tomlinson tripling up as the Ghost, Player King and Gravedigger.
Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, Polonius and Horatio are given insufficient opportunity to register strongly, but counter-tenors Christopher Lowery and Rupert Enticknap have fun camping it up as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Neil Armfield’s effective and unassertive production is inoffensively updated to a modern setting.
So full marks on the grounds of clarity and economy. But I was far more emotionally engaged by Franco Faccio’s romantically overheated Amleto of 1865, broadcast by BBC Radio 3 last week from the Bregenz Festival, than I was by this clean, lean and unambiguous vision of a tragedy that should plumb the darkness of moral life.