That played quite well to my ears although I was less happy with the role of the ghost of Hamlet's father. In fact his closing line, gazing down at Ophelia's grave is: "my soul is in the grave, alas, and I am king". Most surprising of all, Hamlet does not die at the end. Polonius only has a walk-on part and is not killed by Hamlet. In the process they dispense with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern entirely Laertes and Fortinbras are rolled into one. To turn a 4-hour play into a 3-hour opera is quite a feat of condensation. If there had been an Oscar in 1868 for best adapted screenplay, I would have awarded it to his librettists, Michel Carré and Jules Barbier for this cheeky adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The rumour I heard was that he has Hamlet surviving the duel and living happily ever after with Ophelia but that turns out to be an exaggeration. Not only did he write an opera in French based on the greatest play in the English language, he also had the temerity to change the ending. The name Ambroise Thomas spells anathema in Anglo-Saxon circles.
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