18 March 2010

On Tuesday the Metropolitan Opera Company played the opening night of Ambroise Thomas’s ‘Hamlet’, the first time the opera has been seen on the Met stage since 1897!

“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 New York Times). The evening also marked Toby Spence’s Metropolitan Opera debut – he “excelled in the short but crucial role of Laërte” (The New York Times). The performance was made complete by the “sensitive and magisterial conducting of Louis Langrée.” (The New York Times)

Please click here to read the full review in The New York Times.