Hamlet
VISION OF THE WORK
12 musical-dramatic tableaux based on William Shakespeare
Jost interprets Shakespeare’s tragedy as the ‘story of a surreal journey into the inner self’. In his version, Hamlet is sung by a female voice. In this way, Jost suggests universal validity beyond individual fate. Hamlet’s long, painful search for truth and insight is a reflection of the fundamental existential question of a person who has been robbed of all security by a traumatic experience. “This ambiguity is reinforced and becomes the actual subject of the opera by the fact that Hamlet is literally “dissolved” as a character at crucial points in the action: in his reflective monologues, choir voices take over his text. These choral movements expand the space of the title character and distort the temporal structure of the immediate action by condensing the plot-driving moments and presenting them at a rapid pace, while the monologues, carried by inner tension, establish themselves as islands of calm within the overall structure.”
Christian Jost
In places, original English passages have been inserted into the German libretto – sometimes alternating with the German text, sometimes running parallel to it (inner voices).
THE WORK IN THE MEDIA