Absent from the Paris Opera stage since 1938, Ambroise Thomas’ grand opera returns with a staging by Krzysztof Warlikowski, until April 9 and soon live in the cinema. Dense and disturbing.
The show opens with an elderly lady, Queen Gertrude with her back to the audience, seated in a wheelchair watching The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne by Robert Bresso on an old black and white television. Her son, Hamlet, is next door, on a bed. Hamlet and his mother, the regicide queen, are exiled to a retirement home, which evokes a mental asylum. A corridor to the right of the stage, delimited by bars, is traversed by people who seem to be suffering from violent dementia. Absent from the Paris Opera stage since 1938, the grand opera by Ambroise Thomas, created in 1868, returns in a spirited staging by Krzysztof Warlikowski.
Plural madness
Hamlet therefore evolves in this institution, where experiments are carried out in the background. The staging by Polish Krzysztof Warlikowski overflows with creativity and teems with many details. It is up to the viewer to follow the many actions taking place simultaneously. An atmosphere of alienation floats on the stage during the almost three hours that the show lasts. An agonizing and melancholic alienation, fueled by flashbacks, mixed with the guilt of the protagonists, who come to desire death to escape their painful present. The places seem inhabited by madness and despair.
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Hamlet, haunted by his mother’s remarriage two months after his father’s assassination, cries out for revenge without daring to take action, despite the promise made to the ghost of his father’s king. The Danish prince, masterfully embodied by the baritone Ludovic Tézier, who had already interpreted this title role twenty years ago in Toulouse, is apathetic, plagued by indecision. He moves like a soul in pain and carries within him sinful desires. At the same time he desires this regicide mother whom he wants to kill, he wants her to live and to die. He wants her for himself, and above all not to share her with his new father, this usurping king. He loves his mother madly. Eve-Maud Hubeaux, as mother and queen, brings great depth to the drama, up to this disturbing scene where she allows herself to be undressed by Hamlet and goes to bed with him in the same bed.
Coming soon to the cinema
Full of revenge, Hamlet abandons his fiancée, Ophelia. Tired of her indecision, her inability to act, to become an adult, the happy fiancée sinks into depression. Lisette Oropesa manages to bring out all the tragedy suffered by Ophelia on the verge of breaking up and, ultimately, to literally die of love. The American soprano, with rare dramatic intensity, moved the audience, who gave her a long standing ovation. The new signed Hamlet Krzysztof Warlikowski and the conductor Pierre Dumoussaud is overwhelming in the interpretation and a little confusing in the staging. It is dense, powerful, carnal and deliciously crazy.
The opera will be broadcast live on March 30, 2023 on Arte concert and in UGC cinemas, as part of their “Viva l’Opéra!” season. and in independent cinemas in France and Europe, then later all over the world.
Until April 9 at Opéra Bastille
Technical sheet
Hamlet, in five acts, 3:40
Music : Ambroise Thomas (1811-1896)
Booklet: Michel Carré and Jules Barbier
According to : william shakespeare Hamlet
Musical direction: Pierre Dumoussaud
Staging: Krzysztof Warlikowski
Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris
Cast: Hamlet: Ludovic Tezier, Claudius: John Teitgen, Laertes: Julien Behr, Ghost of the Dead King: Clive Bayley, Horatio: Frederic Caton, Marcellus: Julien Henric, Gertrude: Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Ophelia: Lisette Oropesa (until March 30) Brenda Rae (April 2-9).
Summary : Everything takes place in the Palace of Elsinore where Claudius, with the complicity of Queen Gertrude, has just killed his brother, the King of Denmark, to ascend the throne. He can thus marry this one, his mistress for a long time. Hamlet, the son of the assassinated king, loves Ophelia, the daughter of the chamberlain Polonius, but he must accomplish the revenge that the specter of his father demands of him. On this psychological intrigue, Ambroise Thomas weaves the fabric of a great French opera.