Brett Dean's multi-award-winning opera received its world premiere at Glyndebourne Festival 2017. The world premiere recording of Brett Deans new opera based on Shakespeares best-known tragedy: To be, or not to be. This is Hamlets dilemma, and the essence of Shakespeares most famous and arguably greatest work, given new life in operatic form in this original Glyndebourne commission. Thoughts of murder and revenge drive Hamlet when he learns that it was his uncle Claudius who killed his father, the King of Denmark, then seized his fathers crown and wife. But Hamlets vengeance vies with the question: is suicide a morally valid deed in an unbearably painful world?
Allan Clayton
as Hamlet
Barbara Hannigan
as Ophelia
Rodney Gilfry
as Claudius
Sarah Connolly
as Gertrude
David Butt Philip
as Laertes
Kim Begley
as Polonius
Jacques Imbrailo
as Horatio
James Newby
as Marcellus
John Tomlinson
as Ghost/Gravedigger
Rupert Enticknap
as Rosencrantz
Christopher Lowrey
as Guildenstern
Vladimir Jurowski
as Self/Conductor
