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by Ambroise Thomas, directed by Alain Gaulthier

Opéra de Montréal, Place des Arts, Montréal

November 16, 19, 21 & 24, 2024

Tous: “Vive Hamlet! vive Hamlet! Vive notre Roi!”

Opéra de Montréal’s production of Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas is a must-see for any Canadian opera fan. The most general reason to see it is that the 1868 opera, once so popular, is now seldom performed. This is the first production by OdM. The COC last staged it in 1985. The more specific reason to see it is to witness the spectacular performance by Sarah Dufresne as Ophélie. This is the breakthrough role for the Niagara Falls native who was recently a member of OdM’s Atelier Lyrique. It is extraordinarily exciting to see a talent who is certain to be in demand everywhere.

The libretto for Hamlet is by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier based on a French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas, père, and Paul Meurice. Carré and Barbier were famed for their libretti which include Gounod’s Faust (1859) and Roméo et Juliette (1867) and Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881). Their libretto for Hamlet is often criticized for being unfaithful to Shakespeare, but the concern of Carré and Barbier was in being faithful to Dumas and Meurice’s adaptation which was the only version French-speakers were familiar with.

This version departs from Shakespeare in many ways. The most notable are that the Ghost of Old Hamlet reappears to the dismay of Claudius and Gertrude and that Hamlet does not die at the end but is proclaimed the new king. To make Hamlet into a libretto Carré and Barbier have to simplify things further. Nearly all minor characters including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are eliminated. Horatio becomes a minor character on a level with Marcellus. Polonius is reduced to a minor character with only eight lines to sing, many of his remarks in Shakespeare being given to Gertrude and Claudius.

At the same time Carré and Barbier make the roles of Gertrude and Ophelia larger. They give Gertrude a long aria in which she reflects on her life and Ophelia’s death is not reported as in Shakespeare but depicted on stage in a 20-minute-long scene that is the highlight of the opera. Also, Carré and Barbier provide the opera with a chorus. In Shakespeare, we hear about feasts and celebration, but in the opera we see them and Elsinore, unlike in Shakespeare, feels fully populated.

Carré and Barbier make two changes in emphasis in their libretto that make the opera feel more unified than Shakespeare’s play. The first is that Hamlet does not “put an antic disposition on”. Instead, the libretto shows that the shock of the Ghost’s information, his feeling that he must repress his love for Ophelia and his failure to muster the courage to kill Claudius all build up to drive him near to insanity.

In the libretto, Hamlet does not kill Polonius so it is not Polonius’ death that drives Ophelia to madness and suicide. Carré and Barbier create a happy scene of betrothal between Hamlet and Ophelia. After this, follows the scene with the Ghost and Hamlet is so shaken he cannot abide anyone’s company including Ophelia’s. For Ophelia, Hamlet’s increasing coldness, especially, as per the libretto, when he finds that Polonius is an accessory to Claudius’s crime, causes her great mental distress. It is Hamlet’s “Get thee to a nunnery” speech, delayed until late in the libretto, that brings Ophelia to the breaking point.

By the 1980s, audiences and critics seem finally to have got over the fact that the opera is not true to Shakespeare and have been able to view the work in its own right and recognize its great virtues. The result is that productions have increased. The COC’s 1985 production was important because Joan Sutherland made its Ophélie the final role debut of her career which then stood as a challenge for all future coloratura virtuosos. The Metropolitan Opera’s revival in 2010, the first time the piece had been staged there since 1897, was meant as a star vehicle for Simon Keenlyside.

One of the merits of the present Hamlet is the amazing clarity of diction of the entire cast. For anyone who knows French there really is no need to glance up at the surtitles. Alain Gaulthier’s direction employs no distracting concept and focusses instead on ensuring that every encounter between characters is played with keen attention to psychological detail.

It is very easy to see Thomas’s Ophélie as the real star of Hamlet since her 20-minute-long mad scene is the longest and most difficult mad scene written between Lucia’s mad scene in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1830) and Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung (1909), often called one 30-minute-long mad scene. Sarah Dufresne already proves herself a remarkable singer right from the start. In the Act 2 scena “Sa main depuis hier n’a pas touché ma main!” Dufresne already drew thunderous applause for the beauty of the lyrical passages and the pinpoint accuracy of her coloratura.

This scena only proved to be a foretaste of the Dufresne’s astounding achievement in the mad scene itself. Gaulthier rightly omits the ballet that precedes the mad scene in the full opera with the result that Ophélie is completely alone and her addresses to the peasants who would have been part of ballet – “A vos jeux, mes amis” – seem to be merely part of her fantasy. The choral comments are given by a chorus hidden backstage making the atmosphere even more mysterious. Dufresne is in full command of the lovely lyrical passages, the stunning roulades, glissandi, trills and the firmly held stratospheric high notes with supreme comfort and beauty. Unlike many coloratura sopranos, Dufresne has that miracle of a voice that never loses its creamy tone even in the most taxing passages. Dufresne also has the ability to make coloratura sound not like mere display but like the natural expression of character. I, like the entire audience hung on every note. The applause Dufresne received was the loudest and longest I have ever heard in recent memory after a single aria.

The role of Hamlet has no equivalent single showpiece. Instead, the entire role is an incredible test of a baritone’s stamina, vigour and expressivity. Except for the solo scenes of Ophélie, Gertrude and Claudius, Hamlet is on stage and singing throughout the entire opera. Toronto-born Elliot Madore has a warm, velvety voice that he controls to suit every one of Hamlet’s moods. The opera may depart from Shakespeare’s plot, but the character of Hamlet is extraordinarily complex. Such is Madore expressivity that he easily encompasses in voice and acting all of Hamlet’s changing moods from joy to despair, from rage to serenity, from heroism to self-reproach. Like the finest actors, Madore often conveys conflicting moods simultaneous as in Hamlet’s chanson bacchique, “Ô vin, dissipe la tristesse / Qui pése sur mon cœur!”, a song in which Hamlet combines the vivacity of a typical drinking song with a statement of his depression.

In the opera we do not have to wait until the chapel scene to see that Claudius and Gertrude feel guilty. In the Act 2 of opera, Gertrude wonders whether Hamlet is acting so cold toward her and Claudius because he knows what they did (“La vérité, peut-être, à ses yeux dévoilée…”). Both bass-baritone Nathan Berg as Claudius and French mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes as Gertrude give superb performances. Deshayes is the only non-Canadian in the cast or creative team, proof that Canadians definitely have the wherewithal to stage French grand opera The strength and darkness in Berg’s voice come to the fore in his fine chapel scene aria “C'est en vain que j'ai cru me soustraire aux remords”. Deshayes’ voice is both agile and powerful with ringing high notes. She makes Gertrude’s self-reflection “Grâce! Épargne-moi!” one of the highpoints of the opera.

Other notable performances come from Alain Coulombe as Le Spectre and Antoine Bélanger as Laërte. Coulombe’s bass is usually warm and comforting, but here he is able to make Le Spectre’s utterances appropriately cold and menacing. Bélanger has a forceful tenor that lends a note of unforced heroism to his main aria “Pour mon pays, en serviteur fidèle”.

The set by Frédérick Ouellet consists of three main units that can by moved into various configurations. The design has moved the time of the action from the late middle ages to sometime just after the opera was written. The set shows that the castle has been recently wired for electricity and equipped with modern plumbing since the wires and pipes are on the surface of the heavy stone walls. The courtiers learn of the accession of Claudius by reading newspapers. In a subtle way presenting an Elsinore adapted to the modern age reflects the opera itself which is an adaptation of a 17th-century play to the taste of Thomas’s contemporaries.

The central unit of the set is a theatre with a red curtain. This is where Old Hamlet’s body is displayed on a bier and later where Ophélie’s body is displayed. It is also where the play-with-a-play takes place. This stage-within-the-stage give the opera a metatheatrical aura as if to remind us that what we are seeing is another version of Shakespeare’s play.

Sarah Balleux’s gorgeous costumes place the characters in 19th-century versions of medieval garb, all splashed with gold, except for the costumes for Hamlet and Ophélie. This separates the two as ones who have escaped the corruption of the court in contrast to Gertrude and Claudius, whose robes are marked with the most gold of all.

Audiences may have flocked to OdM’s Hamlet because of the works rarity, but the production with magnificent playing by the Orchestre Métropolitain under Jacques Lacombe and spectacular singing by the cast and chorus made the strongest possible case for Hamlet as an unjustly neglected classic. One left the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts thrilled by the experience of witnessing all aspects of a performance combine to create art of the highest calibre.

Christopher Hoile

Photo: Elliot Madore as Hamlet with the ensemble; Alain Coulombe as Le Spectre; Sarah Dufresne as Ophélie; Elliot Madore as Hamlet; Nathan Berg as Claudius and Karine Deshayes as Gertrude. © 2024 Vivien Gaumaud.

For tickets visit www.operademontreal.com.