Met’s new ‘Hamlet’: To be or not to be true to the text

By MIKE SILVERMAN
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, all right, but not as Shakespeare imagined. No Norwegian prince arrives to seize the Danish throne. And to be or not to be is not the question. So it goes in the latest operatic adaptation of the most famous play in the English language. “Hamlet,” with music by Brett Dean and libretto by Matthew Jocelyn, opens at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday. Jocelyn has taken pains to condense the play into an opera that runs less than three hours. He says he opted to focus on a family story, along the way changing familiar bits and cutting out subplots. The opera is the final new production in the Met’s comeback-from-COVID season.