A very entertaining innovation of our French adapters is that instead of Hamlet telling the players how to act, or in opera how to sing, he calls for wine, and sings a merry drinking song, which probably pleased the performers much more than a free singing lesson or a few tips on elocution. I should very much like to see how Wagner would have treated this scene. I feel sure he would have made Hamlet tell the singing players to use the Italian _bel canto_ production, but, at the same time, to sing the words as if they meant something and were not as unimportant as the perpetual A--A--A of the singing exercises.
The usual end of the opera differs a little from Shakespeare's. The Queen, Laertes, and Polonius live, and Hamlet is crowned King of Denmark to music very similar to that which is sung in the first act, in praise of Claudius and his Queen. But there is another ending sometimes played to this opera. It is an ending that ought to make Cibber blush! Sir Alexander Mackenzie told me he saw this closing scene in Paris. The poor, unimaginative, bourgeois English producer could never rise to such Latin heights. Here it is:--At the end of the play, Ophelia marries Hamlet, and the Ghost, with full melodrama-musical accompaniment, gives them his blessing. It is a dull thing to be a simple Anglo-Saxon!
One of the most interesting things about this opera is that Hamlet is a bass-baritone; very few people would believe this unless they heard the opera, or saw it in black and white in the score.
A very interesting opera on this subject is +Aristide Hignard's+ lyric drama in five acts, book by Pierre de Garal. The composer finished the score in the well-founded hope of a speedy production, neither he nor his friends knowing that Ambroise Thomas's work on the same subject was already accepted and being rehearsed at the Opéra, Paris, which fact upset all his hopes. In this deeply studied work the composer had made an effort to discover a new form, and believed that he had succeeded. The new form consisted in this, says M. Hignard in his preface to the score: in the vocal part of his work he interpolates declamation, replacing the recitatives, and fully backed by the orchestra. This procedure, which Massenet employed much later in _Manon_, was undoubtedly new then, and the honour of inventing it falls distinctly to Hignard. The composer was so disappointed at not being first in the field, that even before the production and subsequent success of his colleague's opera he abandoned all hopes of producing his work on the stage in Paris, but published the score, not only to make it known but also to prove that it had { 32} been conceived by him at the same time as his illustrious _confrère's_ opera. After twenty years it saw the light in his native town of Nantes, and its success gave some consolation to its composer for his earlier disappointment. Clément and Larousse, in their account of it, say: "This _Hamlet_ is remarkable in more than name. In it one finds much music of a real and high inspiration; in the numbers it is necessary to mention, the Platform scenes are treated very dramatically; the beautiful septuor which follows the Play scene, and particularly the music that accompanies the funeral of Ophelia, when the composer finds music of great pathos, are most suitable. The _entr'actes_, ballets, and character passages make delightful episodes, being full of charm and grace, and very picturesque in colouring. To sum up, it is the work of an artist, always learned, and does great honour to the hand that signed it." Grove's _Dictionary of Music_ does not mention this composer's name, but Riemann says he was born in Nantes, May 22, 1822, was a pupil of Halévy at the Paris Conservatoire, composed much music, including several comic operas, and died at Vernon in 1898.