4MEYERHOLD’S HAMLETAn Unrealised Dream
Writing about operatic adaptations of Hamlet, music scholar Winton Dean once remarked that setting the play to an opera has ‘tempted the angels, but only lesser beings have rushed in’ (Hartnoll 1964: 163). By ‘angels’, Dean was evidently referring to some of the greatest names in the galaxy of Western classical music: the likes of Schumann (Frederick Jensen 2012: 54), Berlioz, Shostakovich, and (reportedly) Prokofiev. These, together with many other luminaries, constitute an alternative ‘canon’: for the greatest might-have-been Hamlets in the history of adaptations of the tragedy, which would also include Andrei Tarkovsky’s film1 and the aborted Moscow Art Theatre ...
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