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Abridged but effective Montreal
Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts
11/16/2024 - & November 19, 21, 24*, 2024
Ambroise Thomas : Hamlet
Elliot Madore (Hamlet), Sarah Dufresne (Ophélie), Karine Deshayes (La reine Gertrude), Nathan Berg (Claudius), Antoine Bélanger (Laërte), Alain Coulombe (Le Spectre), Rocco Ripolin (Marcellus), Alexandre Sylvestre (Horatio), Matthew Li (Polonius)
Chœur de l’Opéra de Montréal, Claude Webster (Chorus Master), Orchestre Métropolitain, Jacques Lacombe (Conductor)
Alain Gauthier (Stage Director), Frédérick Ouellet (Sets), Sarah Balleux (Costumes), Renaud Pettigrew (Lighting)
E. Madore (© Vivien Gaumand)
Premiered in Paris in 1868, Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet has since been forgotten, save for Ophelia’s mad scene, familiar to Callas lovers through live and studio recordings (Milan 1956; Athens 1957; Paris 1958). In the 1980’s, it was revived for Dame Joan Sutherland, en fin de carrière, and to a lesser extent for American baritone Sherrill Milnes. Since then, it’s mainly been a vehicle for star baritones, such as Bo Skovhus, Thomas Allen and Simon Keenlyside. This is understandable, as Hamlet is a role in which the baritone, a voice reserved for villains and fathers, can go full‑on histrionic.
The plot of this adaptation diverges significantly from Shakespeare by necessity, as the play’s over twenty characters would be too confusing in an operatic context. Moreover, as it was commissioned for the Paris Opera during Napoleon III’s Second Empire, it’s imbued with the epoch’s overtly bourgeois values. In the play, most of the major characters die: Hamlet, Ophelia, King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Polonius and Laërte. This was too gloomy for Paris circa 1868. King Hamlet, the younger Hamlet’s father, is poisoned with wine splattered on his lips during sleep, a less morbid death than poison ear drops in the play. More seriously, the threat of war with Norway is omitted in the opera.
In 1827, an English troupe performed Hamlet (in English) in the French capital to the delight of a public mostly unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s language. Ophelia was performed by an Irish actress, Harriet Smithson (1800‑1854), who enchanted Parisians with her portrayal of a femme fragile. This was in contrast to London, where Smithson failed to dazzle due to her Irish brogue and modest voice. But nonetheless she greatly impressed both Berlioz and playwright/novelist Alexandre Dumas père (1802‑1870). Berlioz became obsessed with Smithson, who in turn inspired his Symphonie fantastique (1830), which conjured opium‑inspired visions in which the composer’s beloved is a leitmotif, an idée fixe. Another Berlioz work, Tristia (1832), included the ballad, “La Mort d’Ophélie.” After an intense courtship, Berlioz married the Irish actress, though their marriage suffered after his prodigious success.
Thanks to Smithson, there was an Ophelia craze in Paris. Sculptor Antoine-Auguste Préault (1809‑1879), a proponent of the romantic movement, created a famous relief of a dead Ophelia in shallow water. In the 1840s, Dumas co‑wrote an adaptation of Hamlet with novelist and dramatist Paul Meurice (1818‑1905). This became the basis of the libretto to Thomas’s Hamlet.
The femme fragile was a figure emanating from Italian bel canto. Several operas from that style of the early nineteenth century feature fragile heroines driven to insanity due to emotional stress or a broken heart. Think Imogene from Il pirate (1827), Amina from La sonnambula (1831), Elvira from I puritani (1835) or Lucia di Lammermoor (1834). Thomas’s Hamlet, premiered a year after Verdi’s Don Carlos (1867), is a rare link between bel canto and grand opera, the style invented by Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791‑1864) and perfected by Verdi in Don Carlos and Aida (1871).
Thomas originally conceived the title role for a higher male voice, but opted for a baritone when unable to find a suitable tenor. The star baritone who premiered the role of Hamlet, Jean‑Baptiste Faure (1830‑1914), was also the creator of the role of Rodrigue, Marquis de Posa, in Don Carlos. This Montréal production’s Hamlet was Canadian baritone Elliot Madore, a talented and versatile young lyric baritone. He completely inhabited this difficult role, convincing us of being truly mad from grief following his father’s death, his mother’s remarriage to his uncle and suspicions about his father’s murder. Madore’s nuanced performance, avoiding all manner of excess, made one empathise with Hamlet, and he easily conveyed his rank thanks to an idiomatically regal deportment.
In the Act I love duet with Ophélie, “Doute de la lumière”, one of the opera’s most famous passages, he managed to be tender yet distant given his distress and preoccupation. He was truly touching in the Act III aria, “J’ai pu frapper le miserable... Etre ou ne pas être”, conveying the character’s anguish and torment. In the Act II aria, “O vin, dissipe la tristesse”, he conveyed Hamlet’s mania, exhilarated at the prospect of tricking King Claudius with his play within a play, “Le Meurtre du vieux Roi Gonzague”. The aria is reprised at the end of the act and Madore managed to give a different colour to the same musical lines. His Act V aria, “ Comme une pâle fleur,” was appropriately funereal and remorseful. At moments, such as at the finale of Act II, Madore seemed overtaxed. Possibly this was due to being fully immersed in the role, but the orchestra made matters worse by playing too loudly.
Alain Gauthier’s straightforward staging of the opera offered little originality, but this is a safe recipe when presenting an unfamiliar work. Unfortunately, it reinforced the opera’s Second Empire bourgeois spirit, emphasizing sentimentality at the expense of drama. With such a choice, Ophélie is arguably more prominent than Hamlet. In a clin d’œil to Gounod’s 1859 sentimental treatment of Goethe’s Faust, where Marguerite is wrongly as important a character as the title character, Ophélie’s suicide by drowning was reminiscent of Marguerite’s apotheosis at the opera’s finale “Anges purs, anges radieux... Sauvée!” Gauthier had Ophélie holding reeds in such a way that she resembled a winged angel. Effective, but overly cloying, and dramatically ineffective, as this imbalance weakened the tragic element.
Canadian lyric coloratura soprano Sarah Dufresne was an excellent choice as Ophélie. Her bright, clear voice was the right timbre for this femme fragile. She conveyed the character’s fragility and sadness in her Act II aria “Sa main depuis hier... Les serments ont des ailes”. In Act I, including the duet “Doute de la lumière”, she tended to sing sharply. This thankfully improved in the following acts. Dufresne impressed in the mad scene, “A vos jeux, mes amis, permettez‑moi”, where she showed an amazing mastery of coloratura. Given the vocal acrobatics, the soprano’s grace and Gauthier’s choices in staging, Dufresne outstaged Madore and received the most applause at the end.
France’s leading mezzo Karine Deshayes was a superb Queen Gertrude. Though the role is not as prominent as Hamlet and Ophélie, Deshayes, whose charisma and stage presence are immense, made the role essential. She was riveting in the finale of Act III, “Ah! Que votre âme sans refuge”, where the imposing royal gradually crumbles at her son’s admonishment and eventual recrimination. Deshayes was the only native French speaker among the four leading characters. Needless to say, her impeccable diction was an added joy. Nonetheless, the other three leads also impressed with their unusually good diction.
Canadian bass-baritone Nathan Berg conveyed King Claudius’s remorse and fragility from his first appearance. Despite a regal posture, there was a hesitation in his movement, as if trying to fill bigger shoes. His prayer, “Je t’implore, ô mon frère”, was genuinely moving. Berg managed to make the public have empathy for the opera’s villain – no minor feat.
The secondary characters were all well sung, though tenor Antoine Bélanger sang forte and fortissimo, rather presumptuous for the minor role of Laërte. Bass Alain Coulombe was outstanding as Le Spectre, the ghost of the murdered king. His powerful voice, majestic posture and excellent makeup made his ghost powerfully eerie.
Frédérick Ouellet’s ugly sets were unnecessarily cumbersome but functional. The Danish royal palace seemed overly austere. Its dilapidated walls were an indication of the rot in the royal family. Given the difficulty of depicting a drowning on stage, except with a mirror ceiling, Ophélie walks into the mist, visually appealing but ineffective. This was especially incongruous, as the image of the dead Ophelia in shallow water made famous by Pre‑Raphaelite John Everett Millais’s 1852 painting is so closely associated with the tragic heroine. Sarah Balleux’s costumes were appealing, in particular Hamlet’s garb, especially when he covered himself with the court theatre’s curtain at the end of Act II.
It should be noted this performance was a heavily edited version with no less than forty minutes missing. However, the work’s best music remained. As this is a typical opera in the grand opera tradition, it’s performed in five acts with much choral music and the de rigueur ballet of the epoch. Cutting this fluff was a great idea, as a complete Urtext Hamlet would have been hard to digest. In addition, L’Opéra de Montréal presented the opera with a single intermission, making for an easier and infinitely more pleasurable evening.
Ossama el Naggar
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