#ambroise thomas

[derring-do]

Opera Streams: Mid-Late September 2025

17th: Cavalli's Pompeo Magno from Bayreuth Baroque. Featuring Max Emanuel Cenčić, Alois Mühlbacher, and Nicolò Balducci. Free!

19th: Thomas's Hamlet from Teatro Regio Torino. This production has a tenor Hamlet instead of the usual baritone. Featuring John Osborn, Sara Blanch, and Clémentine Margaine. Free!

LATE ADDITION for the 19th: Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen from Des Moines Metro Opera. Featuring Sun-Ly Pierce and Hera Hyesang Park. Free! (May require registration)

20th: Heggie's Dead Man Walking from San Francisco Opera. Featuring Jamie Barton, Ryan McKinny, and Susan Graham. Rental.

21st: Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier from Opernhaus Zürich. Featuring Diana Damrau, Angela Brower, and Emily Pogorelc. Free!

25th: Verdi's Otello (alt link) from Teatro Real. Featuring Brian Jagde, Asmik Grigorian, and Gabriele Viviani. Subscription.

26th: Ruo's Between Two Lights from O. Festival. Pitched as somewhere between music-theater and a classical concert. Featuring singers of the Nederlands Kamerkoor. Free!

27th: Puccini's Tosca from Wiener Staatsoper. Featuring Elena Stikhina, Jonathan Tetelman, and Ludovic Tézier. Free (with registration)!

30th: Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen from Gran Teatre del Liceu. Featuring Elena Tsallagova, Paula Murrihy, and Peter Mattei. Subscription.

Also of note: Arte adds a recital from Marina Viotti on the 19th. Medici airs a dance piece set to a Christie recording of Dido & Aeneas, featuring Kate Lindsey, on the 21st.

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

so i'm skimming through the teatro regio torino's new hamlet.

first off, apparently all the "hamlet is a tenor" truthers are vindicated because it turns out that the role was originally written for a tenor! and this is the first time it's ever been done that way! and he's played here by none other than john osborn!:

second and i think most importantly, this production is absolutely freakin gorgeous:

third, the murder of gonzago is accomplished with giant (and in the best possible way, extremely creepy) marionettes that look like that one balloon from phineas and ferb:

fourth, there's this really wacky directorial concept with these supernumeraries who hang around, act dramatically, and all read different copies of hamlet. it's meta. it's great. I'm not sure why it's here but it's cool and meta and fun so it's allowed.

fifth, ophelia (i'm still getting the hang of doing accents on this computer). i fucking love this ophelia. first off, she's costumed like this:

PRETTY DRESS. COMBAT BOOTS.

and she is singing the absolute shit out of this role. her name is sara blanch and she is FANTASTIC. her mad scene might be my new favorite. and how they staged her drowning is FUCKING AMAZING:

the LAYERS, man. the LAYERS.

*chef's kiss* this looks so GOOD.

[muchadoabout]

#run across the stage at an unwise speed

SIMON KEENLYSIDE  as Hamlet in THOMAS: HAMLET Metropolitan Opera, 2010

[ub-sessed]

I went to see an opera version of Hamlet tonight and Hamlet fucking LIVES. WHAT THE FUCK?? HE GETS CROWNED and then the curtain falls. WHAT THE FUCK?

Triumphant music was playing and the 2500 people in the audience were clapping and my daughter and I were just clutching each other and asking "What the fuck just happened? What the fuck just happened? What the FUCK just happened?"

I am never going to get over this.

[opera-ghosts]

Evelyn Scotney (soprano) - Pray you listen - Mad Scene ('Hamlet' - Thomas) (1925)

Evelyn Scotney sings the 'Hamlet' Mad Scene, recorded at Hayes on 20 January 1925, with orchestra conducted by Eugene Goossens.

Evelyn Scotney (Soprano) (Ballarat / Australia 11. 7. 1886, † Londra 7. 8. 1967).

Her voice was discovered in 1910, by the famous prima donna Nellie Melba, during her Australian tours. First she received her education at the conservatoire of Melbourne under Elise Wiedermann, then studied singing in Paris with Mathilde Marchesi de Castrone. She made her debut in 1912 at the Boston Opera as Lucia di Lammermoor. She married to the Boston tenor Howard White and undertook with him a concert tours in North America and Australia. After her successful appearances in Boston, in the 1919-1921 seasons she was engaged by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where she made her debut as  Eudoxia in Halévys ‘’La Juive’’. At the Metropolitan Opera her parts included Lucia di Lammermoor, the queen of Shemakan in ‘’The Golden Cock’’, Norina in ‘’Don Pasquale’’ (This part she sang as a partner of Enrico Caruso). She gave a recitals through the USA, Canada and Australia and had a huge success in England. Here, about 1935, she had a significant career as a concert soprano, and sang only seldom on the stage. She was also a gifted pianist and developed a substantial talent as a painter. She trained in the classical manner of the Marchesi school.

[shakespearenews]

Hamlet (Composer: Ambroise Thomas, 1868) Until the twentieth century, popular staged versions of Shakespeare's plays were often very different from the texts we read today. Shakespeare-based operas were sometimes adaptations of these stage versions rather than direct responses to Shakespeare. At the end of Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet, for example, Hamlet lives and is proclaimed king. This is not an innovative attempt by the opera's librettists to rewrite Shakespeare, but a reflection of a highly popular version of Hamlet that was all the rage with nineteenth-century Parisian audiences.

Watching an operatic version of a familiar Shakespeare play can be like an adventure in theatrical archaeology, allowing us to relive how Shakespeare's plays were often experienced in the past: as something new, highly dramatic, exciting, and with unexpected effects. Note how the subdued costume colours and design in director Cyrile Teste's 2017 production for the Opéra Comique in Paris are carefully calculated to minimise a distinction between the audience and the performers. As a result, the Ghost can surprise everyone by appearing from his seat in the auditorium, where he has been sitting unobtrusively, dressed like other operagoers.

[doyouknowthisopera]

Do you know Hamlet (1868) by Ambroise Thomas?

Yes, I've watched/listened to it in full

Yes, I've watched/listened to parts of it

No, I haven't watched/listened to it

No, I've never heard of it

Voting ended onJan 26, 2024

[agnesdelmotte]

hamlet, shakesoeare.

ambroise thomas / warlikowski

opera national de paris bastille

photos OnP