Substitutiary Locomotion!

[acampbell]

ingridmatthews and ladydey, you rock! Nothing like a Virtual Gift to brighten one's day!

Also in the mail today I received a treat for myself I bought with a Christmas gift card: Bedknobs and Broomsticks: The Enchanted Musical Edition (which I'm watching as I type), plus another DVD I bought for Leah's birthday in June.

Hamlet Live in HD rocked. Sitting and watching it all the way through, it struck me how the opera is still Hamlet, but yet it isn't.

I posted last night about how the French absolutely adore Ophelia, so this, being a French opera, places a ton more emphasis on the love story. This particular version featured the ending Thomas wrote after he decided that the English would never accept a Hamlet where the hero survives at the end, as he did in the original ending of the opera. Today's version had Hamlet fatally wounded in the graveyard battle with Laërte (which takes place before Ophélie's corpse even arrives) and collapsing over Ophelie's body, declaring: "Ophélie, I die with you!" I'm telling you, I laughed so hard! Because apparently as far as the French are concerned, once Ophélie expires, there's no point in going on. No Osric, no fencing match at the castle, no poisoned foil or goblet of wine, and definitely no Fortinbras. Of all the main characters (if you except Hamlet, and King Hamlet, who's already dead by the time the opera and play begin), the only ones to die are: Laërte, Claudius, and Ophélie.

The opera simplifies and removes some of the many ambiguities of the play. We know that Hamlet loves Ophélie, that Gertrude and Polonius were implicit in the murder of King Hamlet. It's easy to forget in the course of the opera that Hamlet has been charged with killing his uncle, because it's rarely mentioned. Between the love duets for And it's funny how, when you start mucking around with the details of the play, you're left with weirdnesses and loose ends. Like the entire court marching into the graveyard past the dead body of Laërte without so much as a glance, and Polonius (who's alive and present at Ophélie's funeral!)not even noticing that his only son is lying dead a few feet away. Gertrude's distress in the "portrait" scene with Hamlet seems a lot more justified in the play when she's just seen him kill Polonius and still has the dead Lord Chamberlain lying on the floor in a pool of congealing blood in her bedroom!

Also, there's no mentioned of King Hamlet being poisoned through his ear canal, so the poison scene in the dumb show is just sort of mundane.

Also, if Hamlet dies at Ophelie's grave and there's no Fortinbras, who will take over the throne of Denmark? Probably Gertrude, since the source character in Saxo Grammaticus was the daughter of the King of Denmark and King Hamlet (Horvendil) came to the throne by marriage to her.

Ophélie comes across as a bit self-absorbed. In her initial scene with Hamlet, she's, like, hey, sorry you're so upset about your father dying and your mother marrying your uncle, but do you realize you've been neglecting me?

Filling in for the ill Natalie Dessay today was Marlis Petersen. A big deal was made about her stepping in at the last minute, &c, and she did a reasonably good job, and had a flexible and pretty voice. But she definitely didn't have the charisma of Dessay, and received only an average amount of applause during and after her mad scene. I think many in the audience were disappointed that Dessay was absent. It could be that some were put off by Ophélie stabbing herself in the breast early in the scene, continuing to sing with blood trickling down her white gown, and then slitting one wrist, then the other. There are a lot of elderly people that attend those operas and I'm not sure this sort of thing is agreeable to them. (I really think that Thomas intended the second part of the mad scene to depict Ophélie actually drowning as she does in the play, so the butchery wasn't really necessary, IMO--even if she does just lay herself down on the floor). But having lots of blood in mad scenes nowadays seems to be a trend--back when Zeffirelli first directed Sutherland in Lucia di Lammermoor:



it was a huge deal, and audiences were shocked to see Lucia with actual blood on her gown, never mind that she's just stabbed her bridegroom to death. Now, it's pretty much de rigeur.











Sorry, I got a little distracted, there.

Anyway, I may be picking it apart, but I thoroughly enjoyed the broadcast this afternoon and I'm sure this will become a favorite opera within a very short time indeed. The music really is beautiful.

In other news, after receiving one issue of Supernatural magazine on the balance of my Smallville mag subscription, I get the: "You haven't renewed your Supernatural subscription!" letter. Well, duh, I didn't order Supernatural to begin with. So I'll wait a bit to see if any more come hobbling my way. I guess it's for the best: SV Mag regularly and continually made me crazy, anyway, but we have so few SV products available that I still hate to see it go.