First performed in 1865, Amleto (Hamlet) represented a radical new development in Italian opera, the nuovo melodramma. Composer Franco Faccio and his librettist Arrigo Boito sought a greater degree of musical unity in staged productions and a more equal relationship between text and music. In Hamlet, a play that many then considered un-operatic, they found the perfect medium through which to explore the works philosophical and dramatic power not least the great set-piece scenes: Amletos soliloquy Essere o non essere! (To be or not to be), Ofelias Mad Scene and the fight scenes in a way that strikingly prefigures the verismo operas yet to come.

Artists

Pavel Černoch (Amleto), Claudio Sgura (Claudio), Iulia Maria Dan (Ofelia), Eduard Tsanga (Polonio), Dshamilja Kaiser (Gertrude), Sebastien Soules (Orazio), Paul Schweinester (Laerte), Bartosz Urbanowicz (Marcello), Gianluca Buratto (The ghost/A priest)

Wiener Symphoniker, Prague Philharmonic Choir, Paolo Carignani