Hamlet - Met Opera House

(Simon Keenlyside como protagonista de Hamlet, de Thomas, Met, Março de 2010)

Hamlet, de Ambroise Thomas, é uma ópera de mediana qualidade, apenas merecedora da nossa atenção por um monólogo – o do protagonista – e pela célebre cena de loucura, de Ofélia.

Este artigo aborda, justamente e de modo exaustivo, a adaptação operática da magistral peça homónima de Shakespear. Hamlet é, pois, uma peça de teatro crucial. Já a ópera...

Contudo, quando o protagonista da ópera em questão é Simon Keenlyside, tudo ganha outro brilho. Keenlyside é um intérprete refinado, de voz bela, imensamente lírica e graciosa. A figura é o que se sabe e vê.

Por Keenlyside, sobretudo, vale a pena assistir a este Hamlet.

«On Tuesday night, for the first time in 113 years, “Hamlet” played at the Met, thanks to a road show of a production by Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser that was introduced in Geneva in 1996. Musically “Hamlet” is no masterpiece. But this five-act French opera, which had its premiere in Paris in 1868, is a refined, subtle and, at its best, affectingly understated work, qualities that came through in the sensitive and magisterial conducting of Louis Langrée.

The opera is also a star vehicle for the right baritone in this punishing title role. Simon Keenlyside, the Ralph Fiennes of baritones, was the acclaimed Hamlet when this production was introduced, and he dominated the evening here. His singing was an uncanny amalgam, at once elegant and wrenching, intelligent and fitful. Handsome, haunted and prone to fidgety spasms that convey Hamlet’s seething anger and paralyzing indecision, Mr. Keenlyside embodied the character in every moment, and you could not take your eyes off him.

The soprano Natalie Dessay, this production’s original Ophélie, was to have joined Mr. Keenlyside here. She withdrew from the entire run because of illness and was replaced by the German soprano Marlis Petersen. The opera world has been abuzz recently with reports of Ms. Petersen’s whirlwind last-minute rehearsal schedule. She missed the dress rehearsal on Friday because she was performing in Vienna. The Met sent a coach there to work with Ms. Petersen, who flew to New York on Saturday, then endured a 30-hour period of costume fittings, stage rehearsals with piano and one abbreviated orchestral run.

By Tuesday night, however, this trouper was ready. A lovely woman with a bright, alluring and agile voice, she seemed immersed in a role that, to judge from her beautiful and emotionally vulnerable singing, she clearly relishes.»