4. Singing Shakespeare. Today we take a closer look at the two topics we have been examining so far—operatic texts and opera structures—by watching parts of three English-language operas based on plays by Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten, The Tempest by Thomas Adès, and Hamlet by Brett Dean. The advantage of Shakespeare for us is that the source material is in English and readily available. The disadvantage is that it is written as poetry, which already has its own implied music. Much of the class will be about resolving the conflict between the two.

The strategies for adapting the original are different in each case. Britten’s libretto, crafted by Peter Pears, uses Shakespeare’s lines intact, though fewer of them. Dean’s librettist Matthew Jocelyn also confines himself to Shakespeare’s words, though chopping them up and sometimes assigning them to different characters. Meredith Oakes, working with Adès, is the most radical, rewriting all the text as a series of images without connecting syntax. I hope that comparing the three will tell us more about libretto writing in general. rb.

PREPARING FOR THE CLASS. You may want to review the plots of the three Shakespeare plays in general outline. I attach the original TEXTS of the main scenes we shall be looking at; the two we shall study in most detail are the two shortest: Caliban's "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises" speech from The Tempest (page 3), and Queen Gertude's account of Ophelia's death in Hamlet, "There is a willow grows aslant a brook" (page 11). [The discussion of Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour, which I handed out last week, will now not take place until next week.]

The script, images, and video links will be posted immediately after class.