#reviving laertes

[darkfrog24]

When Ken shows up in the real world, he’s bombarded by imaging that says men rule society. He finds that just being an adult male + showing up gets him some level of respect and admiration. Only when he tries to participate with any depth does he find out that no it’s not enough to be a man; he has to be an accomplished man. The movie stops short of saying it, but he’d have to become more like a Barbie to be the kind of man he wants to be.

Instead, he retreats. The world tells him “no,” so he absorbs toxic literature and takes it back to other naive boys. He glosses over the role his own lack of skills, education, and substance played in his failure, and he creates an imaginary patriarchy based on hollow performances.

[darkfrog24]

The writer turned his life around because he had an emotional reaction, and he had that emotional reaction to witnessing that his action/inaction had a detectable result/consequences.

I think that's the kicker. So much in especially children's lives has either no result or no detectable result. Do the dishes? They get dirty again. Write an essay? The teacher reads it once and then throws it out. Learn math? Oh you can't do anything with it for fifteen years, if ever.

Young people, especially men, have less access to things that make them feel like their actions are anything more than waving their arms in the air. Not just jobs. The hobbies are gone too.

How do we show more young people their shrimp? Not just young people. There are middle-aged incels too, bleh.

jokes aside i think it’s amazing and heartwarming to see like 4chan incel bros perform the miracle of crawling out of that hole and becoming real human beings and chronicling their journey to realizing that they can be well adjusted happy normal dudes

[darkfrog24]

Rom looked like an incel fantasy but wasn't. Yes, he's the schlubby looking but basically decent guy who gets together with the show's bimbo-coded female character, but look at what happens first.

Rom drags himself out from other his brother's thumb while somehow remaining supportive of all his efforts, finds the strength to change to a career that suits his talents even though his culture condemns him for it, leans into his ability as a peacemaker both within and outside of his own family, questions the sexism under which he was raised and decides to support a feminist movement, invents something that saves a quarter of the galaxy from being conquored by an evil empire, and STARTS A UNION SO LITA CAN KEEP HER TIPS, all while being a loving, responsible dad to Nog.

Rom was not merely decent and nice. He was the careful and steadfast everyday hero that a smart and big-hearted tough-as-nails survivor like Lita deserved.

[tragicsibsshowdown]

The Siblings have been Selected!

are you ready to see your favorite sets of tragic siblings go head to head? Well here are you contestants entering!

Polls will be random for the first round and continue on from there bracket style!

And if you would like to make some propaganda… well just make sure to use the tag #tragicsiblingshowdown2023 bc I do wanna see it!

Azula and Zuko from Avatar The Last Airbender

Diluc and Kaeya from Genshin Impact

Donald and Della from Ducktales 2017

Nahyuta and Apollo from Ace Attorney

Vi and Jinx from Arcane

Caleb and Phillip Wittebane from The Owl House

Mari and Sunny from OMORI

Chara and Asriel from Undertale

Luffy and Ace and Sabo from One Piece

Lucas and Claus from Mother 3

Ingo and Emmet from Pokemon

Sam & Dean Winchester from Supernatural

Ed and Al Elric from FullMetal Alchemist

Eda & Lilith Clawthorne from The Owl House

Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli from Mo Dao Zu Shi

Miles Edgeworth and Franziska Von Karma from Ace Attorney

Dick Grayson and Jason Todd from DC

Dess and Noelle from Deltarune

Rillaine and Allen from Evilious Chronicles

Elsa and Anna from Frozen

Thor and Loki from Marvel

Garmadon and Wu from Ninjago

Klavier Gavin and Kristoph Gavin from Ace Attorney

Andrés, Guillermo, Kara and Tamara from Enderbomb

Natsu & Zeref Dragneel from Fairy Tail

Floofty And Snorpy Fizzlebean from Bugsnax

Adaine and Aelwyn Abernant from Fantasy High

Maki and Mai from Jujustu Kaisen

Strelitzia and Lauriam/Marluxia from Kingdom Hearts 

Sasuke and Itachi Uchiha from Naruto

NiGHTS and Reala from NiGHTS into Dreams

Thalia and Jason Grace from Percy Jackson

Bianca  and Nico Di Angelo  from Percy Jackson

Rameses and Moses from The Prince of Egypt

Mephone 4 and 4s from Inanimate Insanity

Taako and Lup from The Adventure Zone

Ianthe and Coronabeth Tridentarius from The Locked Tomb 

Dante and Gene from Minecraft Diaries

Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire from A Series of Unfortunate Events

Kamado Tanjirou and Kamado Nezuko from Demon Slayer

Hornet and The Hollow Knight from Hollow Knight

Killua and Alluka Zoldyck from Hunter x Hunter

Celestia and Luna from My Little Pony

Vash and Knives from Trigun

Mipha and Sidon from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Lumine and Aether from Genshin Impact

Alice and Reko Yabusame from Your Turn to Die

Brambleclaw and Hawkfrost from Warrior Cats

Ponyboy and Darry from The Outsiders

Aaron and Alex Stowe from The Unwanteds

Shigeo Kageyama (Mob) and Ritsu Kageyama from Mob Psycho 100

Hiro and Tadashi Hamada from Big Hero 6

Shadow and Maria from Sonic 

Annie and Hallie from The Parent Trap

Ophelia and Laertes from Hamlet

Ajax and Teucer from The Odyssey

Yin and Jin (The Gold and Silver Demons) from Lego Monkey Kid

Starfire and Blackfire from Teen Titans

The Afton Siblings from Five Nights at Freddys

Kanna Kizuchi and Shin Tsukimi from Your Turn To Die

Hershel Layton and Jean Descole from Professor Layton

Stan and Ford Pines from Gravity Falls

Saeran and Saeyoung from Mystic Messenger

Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa from Star Wars

ROUND 1 MASTERPOST

Post-Round One Update

ROUND 2 MASTERPOST

ROUND 3 MASTERPOST

ROUND 4 MASTERPOST

ROUND 5 MASTERPOST

REVIVAL ROUND 1 MASTERPOST

REVIVAL ROUND 2 MASTERPOST

REVIVAL ROUND 3 MASTERPOST

REVIVAL ROUND 4 MASTERPOST

FINAL ROUND MASTER POST

[justforbooks]

The actor Michael Jayston, who has died aged 88, was a distinguished performer on stage and screen. The roles that made his name were as the doomed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia in Franklin Schaffner’s sumptuous account of the last days of the Romanovs in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), and as Alec Guinness’s intelligence minder in John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on television in 1979. He never made a song and dance about himself and perhaps as a consequence was not launched in Hollywood, as were many of his contemporaries.

Before these two parts, he had already played a key role in The Power Game on television and Henry Ireton, Cromwell’s son-in-law, in Ken Hughes’s fine Cromwell (1969), with Richard Harris in the title role and Guinness as King Charles I. And this followed five years with the Royal Shakespeare Company including a trip to Broadway in Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, in which he replaced Michael Bryant as Teddy, the brother who returns to the US and leaves his wife in London to “take care of” his father and siblings.

Jayston, who was not flamboyantly good-looking but clearly and solidly attractive, with a steely, no-nonsense, demeanour and a steady, piercing gaze, could “do” the Pinter menace as well as anyone, and that cast – who also made the 1973 movie directed by Peter Hall – included Pinter’s then wife, Vivien Merchant, as well as Paul Rogers and Ian Holm.

Jayston had found a replacement family in the theatre. Born Michael James in Nottingham, he was the only child of Myfanwy (nee Llewelyn) and Vincent; his father died of pneumonia, following a serious accident on the rugby field, when Michael was one, and his mother died when he was a barely a teenager. He was then brought up by his grandmother and an uncle, and found himself involved in amateur theatre while doing national service in the army; he directed a production of The Happiest Days of Your Life.

He continued in amateur theatre while working for two years as a trainee accountant for the National Coal Board and in Nottingham fish market, before winning a scholarship, aged 23, to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he was five years older than everyone else on his course. He played in rep in Bangor, Northern Ireland, and at the Salisbury Playhouse before joining the Bristol Old Vic for two seasons in 1963.

At the RSC from 1965, he enjoyed good roles – Oswald in Ghosts, Bertram in All’s Well That Ends Well, Laertes to David Warner’s Hamlet – and was Demetrius in Hall’s film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968), with Warner as Lysander in a romantic foursome with Diana Rigg and Helen Mirren.

But his RSC associate status did not translate itself into the stardom of, say, Alan Howard, Warner, Judi Dench, Ian Richardson and others at the time. He was never fazed or underrated in this company, but his career proceeded in a somewhat nebulous fashion, and Nicholas and Alexandra, for all its success and ballyhoo, did not bring him offers from the US.

Instead, he played Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1972), a so-so British musical film version with music and lyrics by John Barry and Don Black, with Michael Crawford as the White Rabbit and Peter Sellers the March Hare. In 1979 he was a colonel in Zulu Dawn, a historically explanatory prequel to the earlier smash hit Zulu.

As an actor he seemed not to be a glory-hunter. Instead, in the 1980s, he turned in stylish and well-received leading performances in Noël Coward’s Private Lives, at the Duchess, opposite Maria Aitken (1980); as Captain von Trapp in the first major London revival of The Sound of Music at the Apollo Victoria in 1981, opposite Petula Clark; and, best of all, as Mirabell, often a thankless role, in William Gaskill’s superb 1984 revival, at Chichester and the Haymarket, of The Way of the World, by William Congreve, opposite Maggie Smith as Millamant.

Nor was he averse to taking over the leading roles in plays such as Peter Shaffer’s Equus (1973) or Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa (1992), roles first occupied in London by Alec McCowen. He rejoined the National Theatre – he had been Gratiano with Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright in The Merchant of Venice directed by Jonathan Miller in 1974 – to play a delightful Home Counties Ratty in the return of Alan Bennett’s blissful, Edwardian The Wind in the Willows in 1994.

On television, he was a favourite side-kick of David Jason in 13 episodes of David Nobbs’s A Bit of a Do (1989) – as the solicitor Neville Badger in a series of social functions and parties across West Yorkshire – and in four episodes of The Darling Buds of May (1992) as Ernest Bristow, the brewery owner. He appeared again with Jason in a 1996 episode of Only Fools and Horses.

He figured for the first time on fan sites when he appeared in the 1986 Doctor Who season The Trial of a Time Lord as Valeyard, the prosecuting counsel. In the new millennium he passed through both EastEnders and Coronation Street before bolstering the most lurid storyline of all in Emmerdale (2007-08): he was Donald de Souza, an unpleasant old cove who fell out with his family and invited his disaffected wife to push him off a cliff on the moors in his wheelchair, but died later of a heart attack.

By now living on the south coast, Jayston gravitated easily towards Chichester as a crusty old colonel – married to Wendy Craig – in Coward’s engaging early play Easy Virtue, in 1999, and, three years later, in 2002, as a hectored husband, called Hector, to Patricia Routledge’s dotty duchess in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s translation of Jean Anouilh’s Léocadia under the title Wild Orchids.

And then, in 2007, he exuded a tough spirituality as a confessor to David Suchet’s pragmatic pope-maker in The Last Confession, an old-fashioned but gripping Vatican thriller of financial and political finagling told in flashback. Roger Crane’s play transferred from Chichester to the Haymarket and toured abroad with a fine panoply of senior British actors, Jayston included.

After another collaboration with Jason, and Warner, in the television movie Albert’s Memorial (2009), a touching tale of old war-time buddies making sure one of them is buried on the German soil where first they met, and a theatre tour in Ronald Harwood’s musicians-in-retirement Quartet in 2010 with Susannah York, Gwen Taylor and Timothy West, he made occasional television appearances in Midsomer Murders, Doctors and Casualty. Last year he provided an introduction to a re-run of Tinker Tailor on BBC Four. He seemed always to be busy, available for all seasons.

As a keen cricketer (he also played darts and chess), Jayston was a member of the MCC and the Lord’s Taverners. After moving to Brighton, he became a member of Sussex county cricket club and played for Rottingdean, where he was also president.

His first two marriages – to the actor Lynn Farleigh in 1965 and the glass engraver Heather Sneddon in 1970 – ended in divorce. From his second marriage he had two sons, Tom and Ben, and a daughter, Li-an. In 1979 he married Ann Smithson, a nurse, and they had a son, Richard, and daughter, Katie.

🔔 Michael Jayston (Michael James), actor, born 29 October 1935; died 5 February 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[darkfrog24]

People are going to claim men not being punished for doing feminine and so-called feminine things that they like and want is making us weak or ruining society or something and it'll all really be because of the fiduciary obsession with stockholders.

i see a post talking doom and gloom about how we'll never escape toxic masculinity. i think about back in 2017 when american girl released their first boy doll, and a review for him went viral in the collecting community. the review was written by a mom, who said they went into the store to get their daughter a doll, only to see their son's eyes light up like fire when he saw a doll that looked like him, and now every night he puts his doll in pajamas and rocks him to sleep. i think about the toddler in my daycare room a few years back who was obsessed with baby dolls, carrying them everywhere, and his mom proudly told us he uses his sisters' old baby dolls and wants to be just like them. that toddler saw another toddler crying one day and gave her the doll he had to cheer her up. i think about the eight-year-old boy i saw a few years back, excitedly waving around raya's sword in a target checkout line like all his dreams were coming true. there was a video on my instagram the other day of a little boy at disneyworld crying with joy upon meeting his hero, mulan. i think about the voice actor for bow in the she-ra reboot saying his nephews only wanted adora action figures. celebrity men are wearing dresses on tv now. last halloween i saw a little boy dressed as elsa. i went to go see spiderverse over the summer, and in the line ahead of me was a boy who couldn't be older than twelve or thirteen, bouncing and beaming, giddy with excitement over getting to see the female-led romance movie elemental. i think about the five-year-old boy at my library who breathlessly asked me where the pinkalicious books were, eyes widening when i had more on my cart, his mom explaining that he is all about pinkalicious and fancy nancy. i saw so many pictures online of boys and men dressed in pink to see barbie. teenage boys are gonna open their phones and see the man who wrote fucking game of thrones dressed in pink to see barbie. when i was a kid, a boy dressing in pink was practically a social death sentence. there are boys running around in pink on my street right now.

[emailsfromanactor]

The Cast of Hamlet (1964) in Musicals: Part 2

Like Richard Burton, John Cullum (Laertes) started his Broadway musical career in Camelot. He played Sir Dinadan, understudied King Arthur and Mordred, and eventually took over Mordred full-time. Unlike Burton, Cullum kept doing musicals. A lot of musicals. Let's look at some of them!

Cullum's next Broadway show after Hamlet was On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. This is a selection of scenes and songs from the show, narrated by Cyril Ritchard. Barbara Harris gets most of the material here, but watch it all anyway, she's delightful.

After joining the original production of 1776 as a replacement Edward Rutledge, Cullum got to do the role in the film and sing "Molasses to Rum," a tour de force about slavery and Northern hypocrisy.

The shows that Cullum opened in as a star tended to be modest hits at best. Shenandoah was probably his biggest personal success. It ran long enough that he left and came back! He won a Tony! He reprised his role in a revival! Which ran for a little over a month including previews. Ah well. I don't know Shenandoah that well. The plot seems... politically iffy? The lead's whole thing is that he doesn't want to pick a side in the Civil War. But Cullum sounds great!

He won another Tony for On the Twentieth Century! Here he sings "I've Got It All" with the great Judy Kaye. (TW for a rape mention, here are the lyrics if you want to read before watching.) They're out of costume, so you get to see his very '70s outfit. For what he looked like in costume, here's their Tony performance!

And then he didn't originate a role in a musical until Urinetown in 2001. I'm pretty sure this is where I first heard him.

Also he played a dog in The Grinch.

And Audra McDonald's dad in the revival of 110 in the Shade!

In 2010, Cullum was in The Scottsboro Boys as the Interlocutor, who forces the titular characters to reenact their story in the form of a minstrel show. It's a very good, very heavy musical.

Cullum was most recently on Broadway as a replacement in Waitress in 2017-18, but who knows, maybe he'll be back! He did a solo show in 2021 and a movie in 2022. Anyone out there writing roles for 94-year-olds?

[fayes-fics]

Oh also, sorry for the double but how was Shakespeare live??

Hi again! 🫶

It was great despite it being outdoor and raining steadily throughout- glad I had a waterproof poncho!

Susan Wokoma stole the show. I just love her. 🥹 Luke did a monologue from Loves Labours Lost, did a funny turn (without lines) reviving his Laertes, while Stephen Mangan took the role of Polonius giving him fatherly advice, and at the end read an extract but the detail escapes me.

Anyway, an enjoyable if soggy evening lol 😁🧡🧡

[cleverclove]

Hiiiiii so guess who’s reviving the Laertes single dad fic :3

[darkfrog24]

I grew up with teachers of both sexes who said, nearly daily, "Boys can't help [doing disgusting, mean, sexual and awful things]" and "Boys will be boys" (referring to disgusting, mean, sexual and awful things). We have to recognize these for the lies they are. I was decades into adulthood before I realized that boys did awful things not because their maleness made them psychopaths but because they had been raised by teachers of both sexes who permitted it. So the problem isn't coming from nowhere (as in many women in my age cohort were actively taught that maleness is inherently tied to abuse) but it needs solving.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[anticlea-and-laertes]

< Laertes and Anticlea.

Odysseus parents.

Odysseus - son.

Penelope - daughter in law.

Telemachus - grandson.

Currently revived.

Anticlea was the daughter of Autolycus and Amphithea. The divine trickster and messenger of the gods, Hermes, was her paternal grandfather. Anticlea was the mother of Odysseus by Laërtes. Ctimene was also her daughter by her husband Laertes.

Laertes is the father of Odysseus, the hero of the Trojan War, and plays a role in the epic poem. Laertes is also an Ionian king and the son of Arcesius and Chalcomedusa.

will add more later !!

Anticlea - Red

Laertes - Orange.

[darkfrog24]

Role model paradox

The problem with the lack/lack of access to inspiring male role models for young boys is that we can’t solve it for them.

It’s like how the health class video about the Evils of Alcohol had everyone at the Wild Teenager Party(TM) dressed as if they were going to church and showed nothing worse than some inconvenience and (maybe) getting in trouble for having a party (offscreen). The educational institution is not going to show anything that could get them angry letters from parents, even if the students are already in high school and at least some of them are already having sex and driving under the influence.

The kind of role model that parents and teachers would choose will probably seem crummy and manipulative to their kids. “Here, look at this sports star (who plays a boring sport and is older than your parents),” “Look at this kid sports star (who’s a complete goody-two-shoes because they wouldn’t put him on TV otherwise),” “Look at this handsome guy (who’s ugly),” or “Look at this historical/fictional figure (who either did everything the grownups told him and/or showed rebellion in a way that seems boring),” “Look at this genuinely good star of a kids’ TV show (that you outgrew two years ago and would get mocked mercilessly by your peers for talking about).”

The kids have to choose whom they admire, and anyone they pick is going to have some traits that the adults in their lives won’t like. They’ll disobey their parents. They’ll speak defiantly to teachers. They’ll skip school/go drinking/etc. and it’ll be shown as clever and good that they got away with it. I remember writing a children’s story as a program project. It was about two girls going hiking in the woods. They get lost and then find their way again. Pretty tame. My mom kept telling me “Have them say ‘we should have taken an adult with us.’” But then there would have been no point. Even Ramona Quimby got to walk to school by herself, make her own sandwiches, and pulled another kid’s hair once.

There was an early-nineties PSA about always wearing a bike helmet starring Michaelangelo the Ninja Turtle.  It had clearly been written by someone who’d never seen the cartoon. PSA Mikey was humble and polite. Humble and polite.  These writers did NOT understand what it was kids liked about the character.

[darkfrog24]

If you cannot bring yourself to say anything else, focus on how the right is manipulating young men. Teenagers of both sexes still hate being manipulated, right?

posts about the alt-right pipeline being compassionate towards young men while radical leftists shun and shame them are not fucking saying "the men are becoming violent because feminists are too mean!" and if that is your takeaway you need to get off tumblr until you've better honed your critical thinking skills.

those posts are talking about how effective the language and approach you take in your activism can be. this is literally cult deprogramming 101. if someone is being taken in by a violent or dangerous group, that violent or dangerous group is usually offering them compassion and solace while working hard to convince them everyone else in the world is their enemy. you are under no obligation to coddle or act compassionate toward these men and their violent ideologies, but if you have the means to try, it is something that you can do to make a tangible difference.

radicalized people are often only one loving friend or family member or external voice away from being de-radicalized. of course that is not always the case, but it very often is. a lot of y'all rightfully understand that you do not carry the burden of being that voice, but a lot of y'all also have a lot of internalized ideas about morals and punitive justice and have simply written off these people as deserving of only the worst and not worth saving.

ten years ago, my grandmother was a fox news watching republican who voted red in every election and very well could have fallen down the qanon rabbit hole if not for me and her daughter challenging her compassionately, walking her through hypotheticals that validated her feelings & proving why they were false, & being patient with her despite our extreme division in political ideology. it was frustrating fucking work! but i decided i wanted to do it, because i could see the horizon and i could see me making a difference!

"misogynists have been saying feminists are too mean for years, get new material" that is not the fucking POINT. the point is that you, feminist, can be the compassionate voice that guides your brother, your father, your cousin, your grandfather away from fucking becoming or staying a nazi. you can show them compassion and companionship. you can be the woman they think of when their alt-right bros try to convince them that women are the enemy. and you can choose to crystallize that image of yourself so wholly in their mind's eye as worth protecting that they may very well choose to reject those harmful ideas.

it's not saying you HAVE to do it! it's saying you CAN do it! don't you 'firebomb a walmart' people all love taking change into your own hands? where the fuck is that energy right now, huh?

[lovelyballetandmore]

David Drew as Laertes, Derek Rencher as the King of Denmark, Rudolf Nureyev as Hamlet and Monica Mason as the Queen of Denmark in the 1964 revival of Robert Helpmann's Hamlet. The ballet originally premiered in 1942. Photo by Donald Southern/Royal Opera House, 1964

[opera-ghosts]

  Ambroise Thomas’s 1868 operatic telling of Hamlet premiered on March 9, 1868 at the Paris Opera.   Carrée and Barbier (who also wrote the libretto for Gounod’s Faust) have been greatly blamed for the distortions of Shakespeare in their text for Hamlet but, apart from the ending, they managed to condense a very long play into a reasonable opera libretto.The coronation of Gertrude (mezzo-soprano), queen and consort of Claudius, King of Denmark (bass), is taking place at the castle of Elsinore. Prince Hamlet (baritone) expresses his sadness at the death of his father and the hasty remarriage of his mother. He sings a love duet, ‘Doute de la lumière’, with Ophélie [Ophelia] (soprano). Together with her father Polonius (bass), Ophelia bids farewell to her brother Laerte [Laertes] (tenor), who is leaving Denmark. On the ramparts Hamlet sees the Ghost of his father (bass), who relates how he was murdered by his brother Claudius. Hamlet swears to avenge his father.In Act 2 Ophelia complains that Hamlet no longer loves her. She asks the queen’s permission to enter a convent, but Gertrude, already worried by her son’s strange behaviour, refuses the request. Claudius tries in vain to calm his wife’s fears. Hamlet proposes to divert the court with a play put on by a troupe of strolling actors. After a chorus and a drinking song, the play, about the murder of King Gonzago as he lay sleeping, is mimed to Hamlet’s commentary. Claudius pales, revealing his guilt, and Hamlet is overcome with rage; the act ends with a magnificent septet.Act 3 starts with Hamlet’s monologue, based on ‘To be or not to be’. Hamlet hides behind a tapestry as Claudius attempts unsuccessfully to pray. He is joined by Polonius and their conversation proves Hamlet’s suspicions to be correct. Shattered to discover that Polonius knew of the plot, Hamlet violently repulses Ophelia and her love for him. The act ends with a long duet (based largely on Shakespeare’s Closet Scene) between Gertrude and Hamlet, who finally draws a dagger with which to kill his mother, but is stopped by the Ghost.A ballet-divertissement (obligatory at the Opéra) ‘La fête du printemps’ begins Act 4, followed by Ophelia’s mad scene (‘A vos jeux … Partagez-vous mes fleurs … Et maintenant écoutez ma chanson’) and her subsequent suicide by drowning.In Act 5, after a curtailed version of the gravediggers’ scene, events depart radically from Shakespeare. On learning of the death of Ophelia, Hamlet sings ‘Comme une pâle fleur éclose au souffle de la tombe’. A funeral march heralds the arrival of Ophelia’s coffin, followed by a chorus of young girls. Prompted by a final visit from the Ghost, Hamlet kills Claudius and is acclaimed king: ‘Vive le roi Hamlet’.In Paris, at least, a Hamlet with a comparatively happy ending did not worry either the critics or the public, who flocked to hear the great baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure in the title role. The hundredth performance at the Opéra, scheduled for 28 November 1873 at the Salle Le Peletier, did not take place until four months later at the Salle Ventadour, as the Salle Le Peletier burnt down on the morning of that date. Meanwhile, on 19 June 1869, Hamlet was produced with considerable success at Covent Garden, London, where Christine Nilsson repeated the triumph she had scored as Ophelia in the Paris première. Other famous singers of Ophelia included Calvé, Albani, Melba and Garden.The mad scene, much on the lines laid down by Donizetti in Lucia di Lammermoor, is in several sections. Ophelia asks the courtiers if she can join in their games; imagining that she is married to Hamlet, she fears that he will be faithless. In a waltz movement she distributes flowers before singing the ballad ‘Pâle et blonde, dort sous l’eau profonde’, about the Wilis, spirits who lead faithless lovers to a watery grave. (Its melody is hummed by an invisible chorus after Ophelia’s death.)Although it was undoubtedly the mad scene that ensured the opera’s popularity during the 19th century, it is mainly as a superb vehicle for a baritone that Hamlet has survived since then. Faure was succeeded in the title role by singers such as Maurel, Lassalle, Renaud, Ruffo, Battistini and Singher. More recently Sherrill Milnes and Thomas Allen have sung in noteworthy revivals. Hamlet’s music is much more dramatic than that of the other characters; everything he sings is consistent with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, apart from the drinking song; even that can be seen, like his madness, as part of the camouflage put on to deceive Claudius.Another well-drawn character is Gertrude. Her second-act arioso, ‘Dans son regard plus sombre’, was considered by several contemporary critics as the finest solo number in the score, while her third-act duet with Hamlet is the opera’s dramatic and musical centre, as the Closet Scene is the heart of Shakespeare’s play. Though Laertes, Claudius, Polonius and the others are more conventional in their musical characterization, Thomas’ skill in atmospheric scene-painting is frequently at its most vivid in this work. The Ghost’s appearance on the ramparts, accompanied by eerie writing for the brass, is most effective, as also is the melodrama of the mimed play about Gonzago. The ballet music for ‘La fête du printemps’ is less interesting and overlong, but the scene of Ophelia’s funeral procession is very impressive.