The Erstwhile Blues of Thomas’ Hamlet

On November 24, 2019 at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium in Washington, DC, the Dresser attended Washington Concert Opera’s production of Ambroise Thomas’ three-hour opera Hamlet. WCO last presented this Hamlet in 1998. Since 2002, Anthony Walker has served as Artistic Director and Conductor of this robust musical group now in its 33^rd season.

By robust, the Dresser means this—on stage for this production, there were 55 musicians, 40 chorus members, a cast of 9 (two who double) and one very active and enthusiastic conductor.

What stood out in this production for the Dresser was an exceptionally fine cast of singers. Soprano Lisette Oropesa as Ophelia rocked the house with her finely controlled coloratura numbers, especially Ophelia’s mad scene. South African baritone Jacques Imbrailo as Hamlet musically exhibited a range of nuanced emotions without the pyrotechnics Thomas awarded to Ophelia. The Dresser also thinks that Thomas inadvertently tipped a disproportionate amount of attention to Ophelia and that a director has to carefully choose the baritone playing Hamlet.

The Dresser who had never heard work by Ambroise Thomas pauses here to wonder why Thomas made the role of Hamlet a baritone and not a tenor. After all the ghost of his father played most ably by Brian Kontes is a bass baritone and Hamlet’s uncle Claudius (Tom Fox)—brother to and murderer of the dead king—is also a baritone. Additionally, the more minor role of Polonius—father of Ophelia and Laertes—is bass baritone (sung by Timothy Bruno). The Dresser wonders if the composer was trying to make his opera as dark as possible by the high ratio of low tone singers—2 baritone and 3 bass singers.

Jonas Hacker as Laertes provides a satisfying performance, but his tenor role was minor. The Dresser loved the drunken grave diggers sung by tenor Matt Hill (also sung the role of Marcellus) and bass baritone Matthew Scollin (also sung the role of Horatio).

The only other female voice in this opera is Hamlet’s mother Gertrude. Mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti masterfully played that role. She has a powerful voice that she uses well and the ability to show with a glance or a gesture what her character is feeling.

Overall the experience of hearing this opera by Ambroise Thomas was good but the Dresser felt impatient with its many interludes. The musical interludes made the opera seem overly long despite the calming effect felt by the end of the opera. The Dresser also had to let go of comparing the libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier based on a French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas and Paul Meurice to William Shakespeare’s major work of tragedy by the same name. Thomas’ opera cuts a lot out of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, dulling the emotional trauma and psychological complexity.

The next Washington Concert Opera will be Verdi's Simon Boccanegra on April 5, 2020.

The Dresser chooses “Kind of Blue” by Reuben Jackson to have the final word in this review because the poem speaks to the knife-stabbing horror suggested by naming the fictional character Norman Bates out of the film Psycho. In the WCO production, the audience does not get to see even a knife among these tuxedo-wearing men not to mention that Hamlet is positioned far from Claudius. Jackson’s final stanza also summons in the Dresser’s mind Ophelia, who in the flower of her youth drowns herself leaving Hamlet alone with his broken heart and erstwhile blues, blues that started with the death of his father.

KIND OF BLUE

You feel bad

And you feel bad about

Feeling bad

And you feel bad

Because your erstwhile blues

Cause some to scatter

As if you forgot to wash

Or as a sagacious sister

Said in group therapy—
“People act like you going to get all Norman Bates on

        them and shit!”

And if you are like me

You blame yourself

The way you blamed yourself for falling in love

With things which further distance you from your peers,

         the planet

Then a rain-soaked rosebud appears

Or your broken heart holds hands with a cello

And there is no one to see you smile

by Reuben Jackson

from Scattered Clouds

Photo credit: Don Lassell