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?

Cast

Allan Clayton

Hamlet

Barbara Hannigan

Ophelia

Rodney Gilfry

Claudius

Sarah Connolly

Gertrude

John Tomlinson

Ghost/Gravedigger

David Butt Philip

Laertes

Kim Begley

Polonius

Jacques Imbrailo

Horatio

James Newby

Marcellus

Rupert Enticknap

Rosencrantz

Christopher Lowrey

Guildenstern

Vladimir Jurowski

Self/Conductor