As Chloé Zhao's new film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's award-winning 2020 novel Hamnet garners eight Oscar nominations (including one for Max Richter's score), we revisit some of the long-form works and recent albums which Shakespeare's 'sweet prince' has inspired over the centuries - encompassing full-scale operas by Brett Dean, Ambroise Thomas and Franco Faccio, arias by Italian Baroque composers, and concert pieces by Tchaikovsky, Edward MacDowell, Hans Abrahamsen and Wolfgang Rihm.
Hamlet in Music
In the wake of Chloé Zhao's new film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's award-winning 2020 novel Hamnet (starring Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Shakespeare), the Presto team have been revisiting (and discovering!) some of the music which Hamlet has inspired over the centuries - from orchestral pieces by Berlioz, Liszt and Tchaikovsky to songs by Brahms, Strauss and Maconchy, and recent larger-scale settings by Hans Abrahamsen and Brett Dean. 1 hour 59 minutes
This fascinating collection of 'Lost Arias From Italian Baroque Operas' includes excerpts from operas by Giuseppe Carcani, Francesco Gasparini, Carlo Francesco Pollarolo and Domenico Scarlatti, all based on an Italian libretto by by Apostolo Zeno which draws on a major source for Shakespeare's play: Books Three and Four of the Gesta Danorum by twelfth-century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus. The album was praised by BBC Music Magazine for Mameli's 'passion and virtuosity' and by Gramophone for its 'harmonious kinship of intriguing repertoire and felicitous musical expressivity'.
Available Formats: Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Brett Dean: Hamlet
Allan Clayton (Hamlet), Sarah Connolly (Gertrude), Barbara Hannigan (Ophelia), Rod Gilfry (Claudius), Kim Begley (Polonius), John Tomlinson (Ghost/Grave-Digger), Jacques Imbrailo (Horatio), David Butt Philip (Laertes); London Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndebourne Chorus, Vladimir Jurowski
Premiered at Glyndebourne in 2017, Dean's opera was described as 'a formidable achievement' by The Guardian whilst The Times hailed it as 'the operatic event of the year', praising the 'knotty, complex, yet often beguilingly beautiful' score and likening Clayton's performance in the title-role to 'a youthful Simon Russell Beale'. Captured on DVD and Blu-ray during the original run, the work has since been staged to great acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera and Bavarian State Opera.
Read our interviews with Brett Dean and Allan Clayton about the genesis of the piece.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Brett Dean: Rooms of Elsinore
Jennifer France (soprano), Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo), Juho Pohjonen; James Crabb; Volker Hemken; Swedish Chamber Orchestra; Brett Dean
Dean's 'extended fascination and confrontation with Shakespeare’s Hamlet' also inspired the five shorter works on this 2024 album: And once I played Ophelia for soprano and strings, the Gertrude Fragments for mezzo and guitar, Rooms of Elsinore for viola and piano (performed here by the composer), Confessio for bass clarinet (which takes its cue from Claudius's monologue 'O, my offence is rank'), and the accordion concerto The Players. The album was a Gramophone Critics' Choice in 2024, with Andrew Mellor observing that 'all these works, in emotionally marinated performances mostly involving the composer, offer an awful lot to get your teeth into'.
Available Format: SACD
Hans Abrahamsen: Let me tell you
Barbara Hannigan (soprano), Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Andris Nelsons
Composed for Barbara Hannigan (who would go on to create the role of Ophelia in Brett Dean's opera) and premiered in 2013 with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Let me tell you' is based on a 2008 short novel by Paul Griffiths in which Ophelia tells her own story by rearranging the 481 words which Shakespeare gives to her in the play. This world premiere recording won the Contemporary prize at the Gramophone Awards thanks to Abrahamsen's 'finely spun textures' and Hannigan's 'vehemence and passion'.
Read our interview with Hans Abrahamsen about the work.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Ophelia is also centred in this recital from German coloratura soprano Annika Gerhards, which takes its title from a song cycle by Wolfgang Rihm: premiered in 2012, it comprises settings of 'How should I your true love know', 'Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day', and 'They bore him bare-faced on the bier'. The programme also includes Richard Strauss's German-language settings of the same texts from 1918, and Robert Schumann's Sechs Gesänge Op. 107 (the second of which is inspired by Gertrude's description of the drowning of Ophelia).
Available Format: CD
Ambroise Thomas: Hamlet
Thomas Hampson (Hamlet), June Anderson (Ophélie), Samuel Ramey (Claudius), Gregory Kunde (Laertes), Denyce Graves (Gertrude), Jean-Philippe Courtis (The Ghost); London Philharmonic Orchestra, Antonio de Almeida
With highlights including Hamlet's brooding drinking-song 'Ô vin, dissipe la tristesse' and Ophélie's spectacular mad-scene 'A vos jeux', Thomas's opera is based on a French adaptation of the play by Alexandre Dumas (Père) and was premiered at the Paris Opera in 1868. Though Hamlet survives in the original version, Thomas composed an alternative ending which follows Shakespeare's text more closely when the opera transferred to London; this 1993 recording includes the 'Covent Garden finale' as an appendix, and was welcomed by the Penguin Guide for Hampson's combination of 'superb, finely shaded singing with truly Shakespearean power in the acting'.
Available Formats: FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Franco Faccio: Amleto
Pavel Černoch (Amleto), Claudio Sgura (Claudio), Iulia Maria Dan (Ofelia), Eduard Tsanga (Polonio), Dshamilja Kaiser (Gertrude), Sebastien Soules (Orazio), Paul Schweinester (Laerte); Wiener Symphoniker, Prague Philharmonic Choir, Paolo Carignani
Setting a libretto by Arrigo Boito (who also collaborated with Verdi on Otello and Falstaff), Faccio's Amleto was premiered in Genoa in 1865 and revived at La Scala six years later. The duet for Ophelia and Hamlet was warmly received, as was Hamlet's 'Essere o non essere!' and the music for Ophelia's funeral procession, but the work disappeared from the repertoire until 2014, when a new critical edition of the score was prepared by Anthony Barrese. This first recording was released five years later, when BBC Music Magazine pronounced that 'there’s not much rotten in the state of this spirited live performance' and Gramophone deemed the opera superior to Thomas's setting.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Franco Faccio: Amleto
Pavel Černoch (Amleto), Claudio Sgura (Claudio), Iulia Maria Dan (Ofelia), Eduard Tsanga (Polonio), Dshamilja Kaiser (Gertrude), Sebastien Soules (Orazio), Paul Schweinester (Laerte); Wiener Symphoniker, Prague Philharmonic Choir, Paolo Carignaniester (Laerte); Wiener Symphoniker
Filmed at the Bregenz Festival in 2016, this first modern staging of Amleto won plaudits for Czech tenor Pavel Černoch's skilful 'transformation from insecure youngling to ice-cold avenger' (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) and Oliver Tambosi's 'dark theatrical dream' of a production; The Telegraph hailed the piece as 'a marvellous opera, anticipating the musical language of later Italian verismo composers' and declared that 'if plans are not already afoot to bring it to the land of Shakespeare, they certainly should be'.
Available Format: Blu-ray
This handy anthology draws together four orchestral works inspired by Hamlet: Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture from 1888, Liszt's symphonic poem from 1858, Joseph Joachim's overture from 1853 (which he sent to Liszt for perusal), and Edward MacDowell's tone poem Hamlet & Ophelia (inspired by the numerous performances which the young composer and his wife saw during their honeymoon in London). Friedrich Kuhlau's William Shakespeare Overture (depicting the playwright himself as a young man) from the mid-1820s acts as a curtain-raiser.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Shostakovich composed the music for Grigori Kozintsev's Russian-language film of Hamlet in 1964, with The New York Times noting that the score 'has great dignity and depth, and at times an appropriate wildness or becoming levity'; it was awarded a special jury prize at the All-Union Film Festival for Best Music. This concert suite was compiled by Levon Atovmyan the following year, and includes 'Ball At The Palace', 'The Ghost', 'Arrival and Scene of the Players', 'Ophelia' and 'Duel and Death of Hamlet'.
Available Formats: FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
