Two things before we get started: first, a funny things happened on the way to Elsinore: with about 40 minutes left and Ophelia waxing mad, the disc hung up and absolutely would not be nudged or even chapter jumped beyond that spot. Now you might think, this being my seventh Hamlet (8th counting the reread) in less than a month, I wouldn't exactly have been on daggers and foils to find out how it ended. But as you'll see below, while I was reasonably certain that everyone would end up mincemeat, I wasn't at all certain what the motives and logistics for the mincemeating would be. And as it turned out, even my assumptions were misguided. Anyway, the date of this post is when I started watching; I finally got and watched the replacement on 1/5/08.
Second, and more important, I must confess to knowing as close to zero about opera as can be known: I watched the production as a drama and can assess it only on that basis. If you want a review from someone who presumably knows opera, here's one; Google will presumably guide you to several others.
Who, when, how long?
Simon Keenlyside, 2004, 3 hrs. (opera by Ambroise Thomas)
What sort of Hamlet?
Baritony.
What's missing, changed?
So much that let's just wrap it all up in . . .
What's odd?
Let us pose a philosophical question: if Ophelia were to fall mad in the woods with no one around to hear her, how many times would she die?
There was a point at which this production had me: I was willing to grant Thomas some latitude in recognition of my own ignorance of the medium: a weird prosthetic high forehead on Gertrude? OK, whatever. Laertes sent to Norway by Claudius, and taking leave not of his sister and father (whose absence at this point seemed likely to be for the duration), but of his sister and her boyfriend, to whom he entrusts her? Well, the lack of any real relationship between Ham and L has always seemed at odds w/ Ham's praise of him and declaration of love for him graveside, so OK, take us that way and show us what you can do. The "very like a whale" exchange played in act II, and with Claud, and not only eschewing the whale but employing just one shape, that of a ship? Well, it misses the point, but it's not a fatal misreading. The Claud-Gert affair, per the Ghost's testimony, explicitly predating the murder of Hamlet Sr., which conspiracy, we learn in act III, also includes Polonius (whose only words come at this point)? A different reading, but it might be made to work.
Then came the play within a play, which is just absolutely terrific: a delightfully bawdy, campy pantomime, with all male actors. When Claud reacts, Hamlet accuses him publicly, but then covers his accusation with his maddest actions yet: he fills a goblet with red wine . . . then keeps pouring, soaking the white table linen with the overflow. He pours more wine over his head, then wraps himself with the "bloody" tablecloth. It's a powerful sequence, immediately before intermission, and I was as willing to applaud as was the audience at that point.
And finally, at the start of act III, "Être ou ne pas être," which I'd begun to think we wouldn't hear. I'm still on board--even when, after Ham doesn't slay the praying Claud, Pol enters to tell the king to cool his jets lest he gives the game away. Ham overhears this, so now knows Pol is as guilty as Claud and Gert (why the Ghost didn't bother to mention that is an open question, but let be), and thus has a motive to kill the old fool. Which is precisely not the point in WS's play, of course. But it's OK, 'cause guess what? . . . HE'S NOT HIDING IN GERTRUDE'S CLOSET WHEN HAMLET COMES CALLING. SO HAMLET DOESN'T KILL HIM, AT THIS POINT, OR EVER!
Now just think about that a minute. If Ham doesn't kill Pol, then why does O go mad? Well, for loss of Ham's love, of course--and indeed, in the closest equivalent to the "nunnery" sequence (except that the convent is O's idea), she has become convinced that Ham, who is in fact only distracted by revenge, having just encountered the Ghost for the first time, no longer loves her, and she has already started to come unhinged. So she's just a shallow little twerp? And if Ham doesn't kill Pol, then what's Laertes' motive for killing Ham? Well, O's shallow little twerpy suicide, of course, for which L sensibly blames her ex-beau. But of course anyone who doesn't know the opera can only guess about this at this point--pretty much the point, you'll recall, when the disc crapped out.
OK, so Gert and Ham, in genuine privacy, yammer on and on and fucking on, and what gets killed dead dead dead, instead of Pol, is all the wonderful momentum established right before intermission. Just before this, Gert has brought in O in her wedding gown and announced that Claud has ordered the nuptial altar readied--but of course O knows by this time that that ain't happening, and after the Gert-Ham closet interview comes O's mad scene, singular and solo.
Still in the wedding dress, and now with a pillow/"baby" strapped to her belly, she sings that Hamlet is her husband: "If he were untrue to me, I'd lose my mind." Duh. Now, I have no objection to her having only one mad scene--if I were staging the play, I might merge the two myself. But I feel very strongly about one thing: no matter how many mad scenes she has, she should be limited to ONE SINGLE SUICIDE. But no, in fact, after singing about the "fiery-eyed wili," a water nymph whose job it is to lure poor swimmers to death, she produces a dagger and answers the gnawing question "what are those noncleavagy protrusions from each side of her bra?" (OK, OK: cheap shot: you wouldn't see 'em from a theater seat) by stabbing herself once in each breast. Not content w/ that bloodletting, she also opens a vein in each arm (and I confess I hadn't noticed those prosthetics until she'd stabbed them) and finally, after a superhuman effort that--judging by the ovation of precisely two minutes--must have been spectacular, she dies.
But wait! After rocking on her side during the ovation, SHE RISES! "He is here! I seem to hear his voice! I will punish him for being late!" Then she invokes the white wilis again and drowns herself, to an understandably briefer and less enthusiastic ovation.
OK, one more good bit before the absolutely goofy dénouement: the gravedigging is achieved by spading up a couple of long floor times, removing them, and then just as I was thinking "You're not laying anyone in there with those crossbeams in the way," lifting away the beams themselves. Unfortunately, the gravediggers lack their WS counterparts' sense of humor--they are grave men, to borrow from another tragedy. Ham arrives solo, and though he doesn't yet know that O is dead, he sings an apology to her for putting her is such a state that her "grief-stricken soul, cruelly rejected by me," already seeks heaven. So having established that, how surprised can he be when he finds out she is dead?
Now L enters and, without making clear that she's dead, chides Ham for his treatment of O, then gutstabs him just before the funeral cortège arrives. Ham has his dagger out as well, but he can't bring himself to use it--you'll notice that he has killed no one yet, intentionally or accidentally.
OK, so now Ham has a belly wound, which of course until the 20th century was fatal about eleven times out of ten. But when O is laid next to her grave, he has enough energy to steal her body so that they can go away and be dead together. No serious effort is made to stop him--except by the Ghost, whom everyone sees and who reminds Ham that he hasn't done his filial duty yet. So the Ghost--who earlier had manhandled his son--goes behind Claud and grabs him for Ham to stab.
Well, OK, pretty good mincemeat count now--but that's it. The Ghost tells his son, "Live for your people, Hamlet, God has made you king." "My soul lies in the grave," replies the bloody-bellied boy, "and yet I am a king." The people hosanna him with "vive"s, and so, it appears, vive he will.
Flesh?
Too too Shakespearean to survive.
Ghost?
Bare-chested in his ripped shroud, looking a little Klaus Kinski-ish.
Ham-Gert eros?
No.
Other people?
I think I've covered the interesting ones.
In a nutshell: nuts. They've not in the cast, but let's give it one Rosencrantz and one Guildenstern, for a total of two court ciphers.
