So How Does It End? Dumas, Shakespeare and Hamlet

The Metropolitan Opera production of Hamlet bows on Tuesday night, with the company's first performance of the opera since 1897.

A poster for the 1868 premiere of Hamlet.

Controversy has followed Ambroise Thomas' opera since it premiere in 1868 at the Paris Opera. French audiences were delighted by its virtuoso writing for the soprano voice and faithful treatment of Shakespeare's famous soliloquies. However, the opera's ending, which differs radically from the last act of the play) continues to upset Shakespearean purists, scholars and critics.

Here's why:

• Laertes confronts Hamlet at Ophelia's funeral procession. (That's in the play.)
• The Ghost appears, and urges Hamlet to kill Claudius.
• Hamlet skewers Claudius.
• Hamlet is crowned King.

When the opera was revised for performance at Covent Garden, Thomas made a few changes:

• The Ghost was omitted from the last act.
• Hamlet killed Claudius and then himself. This omits all that pesky nonsense about "to be or not to be."

Part of the blame for these un-Hamlet-like endings lies with the librettists. Jules Barbier and Michael Carré are the same team who re-wrote Goethe's Faust as an opera for Charles Gounod (an act which may have caused the Franco-Prussian War.) However, their libretto for Hamlet was based not on the original Shakespeare, but on a French edition of the play written by none other than Alexandre Dumas père.

Yes, that Dumas. The French novelist, best known for The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, thought nothing of cheerfully altering the ending of the play, in the same entertaining style with which he bastardized history to write the Musketeers. Dumas' approach to Shakespeare omits many of the secondary characters, tightens up the action, and ends with Denmark being slightly less rotten. The librettists go even further, giving the prince a rousing drinking song, omitting the murder of Polonius, and letting Queen Gertrude survive the carnage at the opera's end.

But wait, there's another ending!

• Hamlet still kills Claudius.
• He perishes at the point of Laërtes' sword.

This approach was first conceived for the Decca recording of the opera, starring Sherrill Milnes and Joan Sutherland, and conducted by Richard Bonynge. (Unfortunately it's out of print.) It's still not strictly Shakespeare, but the tragic denouement is closer to the heart of the play. Either way, this rare opera (it has not been staged at the Met since 1897) is a welcome addition to the 2010 season, and the performance of Simon Keenlyside in the title role promises to be one of the highlights of the next few weeks.

Opera Review: Don Pasquale at the Regina Opera

Brooklyn's Regina Opera Company closed out its run of Donizetti's rambunctious domestic comedy Don Pasquale with a strong performance on March 14.

Luigi Lablache, the first Don Pasquale

One of the "big three" Donizetti comedies, Pasquale was written for bass Luigi Lablache in the title role. So a strong comic bass with command of the parlando style is required. Jorge Arcila filled the bill nicely, with a pleasing baritone and good acting chops. Don Pasquale, a 70-something bachelor who decides to marry just to stiff his nephew out of his inheritance is not the most sympathetic character in opera. But Arcila found the humanity behind all that hot air. His Act III duet with Dr. Malatesta (Andrew Cummings) was everything that opera buffa should be--a thrilling display of vocal pyrotechnics that thrilled the audience.

Cummings, for his part, excelled as the scheming Dr. Malatesta. His pleasing baritone and cool onstage demeanor (not to mention his towering height) made an excellent contrast to Arcila's apopleptic Don. In the key role of Ernesto, tenor Robert Arthur Hughes sang harshly at first, but warmed up to deliver some lovely arias in the third act. All three male leads had trouble being heard over the orchestra. Conductor Matthew Oberstein did his best to keep the volume down, but in a "live" room like the Regina Hall, it is a near-impossible task.

Soprano Michelle Trovato was a bundle of energy and vocal thrills as Norina. Unlike her male cast-mates, she had no trouble singing over the orchestra. As the duplicitous young widow whose sham marriage to Pasquale drives the opera's plot, Trovato delivered a balanced comic performance, handling each of the role's many facets with a diamond-sharp delivery and a voice capable of handling the most agile of passages. Mention must also be made of Linda Lehr, who made the most of the comic opportunities afforded by a mute role as the good Don's housekeeper.

Francesca Zambello to head Glimmerglass Opera

Francesca Zambello has been tabbed to replace Michael McLeod as Artistic Director of the Glimmerglass Opera Festival. One of the finest summer opera festivals in the Northeast, the Glimmerglass Opera is based in Cooperstown, NY, and offers four operas every summer in an idyllic setting by the banks of Lake Otsego.

The Alice Busch Theater, home of the Glimmerglass Opera

In 1992, Zambello came under fire for her coffin-strewn staging of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met. However, the director has received much critical acclaim since. She staged the Ring Cycle in Washington D.C., brought a successful Les Troyens to the Met and even took Broadway with her version of Disney's The Little Mermaid. Zambello's distinct visual and dramatic style can be jarring, but she often succeeds in finding hidden truths within the works she is staging.

Her hiring is a bold and exciting statement for the Cooperstown-based company, which has a reputation for compact productions and innovative stagings of classic operas, baroque works, and rarities from the outer reaches of the repertory. Past successes have included:

• Zambello's staging of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride
• The Mines of Sulphur by Richard Rodney Bennett
• The first American stage performances of Das Liebesverbot, an early opera by Richard Wagner based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.

BAM Opera Festival Focuses on Purcell

Baroque opera is making a comeback in New York City in the Spring of 2010.

William Christie conducts Purcell's music at BAM.

On March 18, the Brooklyn Academy of Music places the work of Henry Purcell at the center of its BAM Opera Festival. Purcell was an English composer whose work predates that of the more popular Georg Friedrich Handel.

The acclaimed baroque performing ensemble Les Arts Florissants will perform Dido and Aeneas in conjuntion with Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Actéon. These two short operas will contrast the 17th century style of Purcell with that of Charpentier, and demonstrate how the elder composer influenced the latter work. Both performances will be led by Les Arts Florissants music director William Christie.

On the 23rd, BAM will present Purcell's The Fairy Queen, also presented by Les Arts Florissants in conjunction with the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream the opera is a major example of Purcell's genis which was lost for over 300 years before being rediscovered by members of the Purcell society in 1901. These are the first New York performances of a special edition, premiered at Glyndebourne in 2009 to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Purcell's birth.

Finally, New York City Opera continues its tradition of baroque opera performance with a revival of their production of Handel's Partenope, originally staged at the Glimmerglass Opera in 1999. Partenope features some of Handel's finest vocal writing. It opens on April 3.