Thomas: Hamlet.(Video Recording Review)

THOMAS: Hamlet * Dessay, Uria-Monzon; Shtoda, Keenlyside, Vernhes, Hollop; Orchestra and Chorus of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, de Billy. EMI 5 994479, 176 mins., subtitled

Those of us who always thought that Hamlet is a fantastic opera now have a production to bolster the cause. Conductor Bertrand de Billy and the directing team of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser have done the opera the honor of taking it seriously as a work of music theater. It was necessary to get past the idea that Hamlet is trying to be a full musical treatment of the play. There's no Fortinbras, Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, and Polonius is a three-line part. But Hamlet at heart is both a good ghost story and the portrait of a young man whose devotion to his father destroys his life with his fiancee, and here the production (this revival is staged by Jean-Michel Criqui) comes up trumps. Hamlet's father was clearly murdered in bed; we first see the ghost wrapped only in a sheet. He immobilizes Hamlet from behind, which Hamlet soon seems to find comforting. At the banquet, Hamlet begins pouring wine into a glass. It fills, then overflows. Hamlet pours the wine over himself and takes up the stained tablecloth as a cloak, like his father's shroud. Later, he pinions his mother in the same fashion his father had held him, and at the end the ghost returns to clasp Claudius, so that Hamlet can stab him. Ophelia's mad scene is likewise a clever theatrical conceit. It is played not on a ...