Faccio Franco: Amleto (2CD)

First performed in 1865, Amleto (Hamlet) represented a radical new development in Italian opera, the nuovo melodramma. Composer Franco Faccio and his librettist Arrigo Boito sought a greater degree of musical unity in staged productions and a more equal relationship between text and music. In Hamlet, a play that many then considered un-operatic, they found the perfect medium through which to explore the works philosophical and dramatic power not least the great set-piece scenes: Amletos soliloquy Essere o non essere! (To be or not to be), Ofelias Mad Scene and the fight scenes in a way that strikingly prefigures the verismo operas yet to come.