Editor Reviews:

Description:
This romantic and rarely performed opera by Ambroise Thomas is now available on DVD in a new production from the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. Starring Natalie Dessay and Simon Keenlyside, this Hamlet production is guaranteed to become the benchmark for all other Hamlets to come on DVD. Dessay creates a monumental performance of Ophelie, culminating in one of the most gripping Mad Scenes of all time ("Partagez-vous mes fleurs…et maintenant ecoutez ma chanson…").

Rating : - A Revelatory Interpretation
Most opera fans think of Thomas's Hamlet as an uninspired, underwritten opera with one superb aria for Ophélie that deserves a place on a French Arias disc, but nowhere else, especially not in a full production, which would be boring and pointless. I used to think the same myself until I watched this DVD, and understood almost at once that Thomas's spare, highly disciplined music is meant above all to illuminate the text. In a long commentary on this work, written around the time of the Met production, Anthony Tommasini expresses the same understanding.

Perhaps it would work with no other artist than Simon Keenlyside, whose Hamlet is an uncanny incarnation of Shakespeare's hero, breathtaking in its power to convey so many shades of Hamlet's conflicted personality. I cannot praise it enough. Dessay is similarly gifted, her initial exchange with Hamlet being especially remarkable, with subtle changes in vocal and facial expression that perfectly express her love for Hamlet and her struggles to understand him. She sings her famous aria with great nuance. Two superb artists at the peak of commitment and interpretive power.

The production itself is less remarkable, though for the most part acceptable as background. Exceptions are the half-bald Gertrude and the grotesque lump of toweling that Dessay must hitch to her waist at a certain point. I also think I've seen enough operatic sofas for a lifetime. But you may find that you can come to ignore these idiocies and comprehend at the level of the heart as well as the head, that, at least here, Thomas was a superb composer in the French tradition that gave us Debussy and Poulenc: the focus is on the text, the music illuminates it, great singing actors interpret it, and you've got a Hamlet that will endure, no matter how infrequently produced. This is art and it does what art is meant to do: move the emotions and effect a heightened sense of tragic meaning and, perhaps, catharsis. I've never watched a DVD that moved me so much and simply would not let me look away.