BBCSO/Weilerstein review – Dean's Hamlet 'diffraction' whets the appetite

Barbican, London
The BBC Symphony Orchestra under the assured direction of Joshua Weilerstein performed music from Brett Dean’s forthcoming opera, and impressed in Hallman’s Gesualdo setting

Brett Dean’s opera based on Hamlet – note the composer’s own “based on” formulation – premieres at the Glyndebourne festival in June 2017. Dean has been building towards the finished work in a number of recent compositions, with From Melodious Lay, a treatment of Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship, the latest. This BBC Symphony Orchestra performance under the assured direction of Joshua Weilerstein more than whetted the appetite.

Whether these scenes for soprano, tenor and orchestra transfer in whole or in part into the opera remains to be seen. The scale of the orchestration may struggle to be accommodated in the Glyndebourne pit. But Dean’s “diffraction,” a setting of Shakespeare’s words from the three surviving editions of the play, with some lines reassigned from other characters to the two principals, clearly points to the essentially psychological direction of the treatment. The troubled and oppressive desires of Hamlet and Ophelia are expressed in the slip and slide of eerily erotic harmonies. Allan Clayton, next summer’s Hamlet, commanded the appropriate princely urgency; but Allison Bell’s fragile Ophelia was the musical and dramatic focus. A boldly written orchestral interlude marked the contrast from the music’s interior world.

Continue reading...