Forget Shakespeare: with Jacques Imbrailo & Haegee Lee as Hamlet & Ophélie, Chelsea Opera Group make a strong case for Ambroise Thomas’s opera under Jonathon Cole-Swinard’s sympathetic direction

Ambroise Thomas: Hamlet; Jacques Imbrailo, Haegee Lee, Richard Wiegold, Grace Durham, Jay Broadhurst, Chelsea Opera Group, Jonathan Cole-Swinard; Cadogan Hall
Reviewed 1 November 2026

Thomas’s Hamlet might not be quite top-drawer grand opera, but with superb solo contributions and some sophisticate orchestral playing this performance played to the work’s strengths

Ambroise Thomas is the nearly man of French 19th-century opera. Born seven years before Gounod and thirty years before Massenet, he was effectively the advance-guard of the composers who developed French opera following on from Meyerbeer. As director of the Conservatoire he was responsible for both modernising the organisation and imposing a conservative curriculum, including attempting to prevent composers such as César Franck and Gabriel Fauré from influencing the students. Thomas wrote a significant number of operas, many of them opera comique and his best known is Mignon (based loosely on Goethe) which began as an opera comique in 1866 though he went on to add sung recitatives and the work was almost as popular as Gounod’s Faust.

The librettists for Mignon were Michel Carré and Jules Barbier, who also wrote the libretto for Gounod’s Faust. And in 1859 they turned to Shakespeare’s Hamlet to create an libretto for Thomas for a five-act grand opera. Their source was Alexandre Dumas’s French version of the play from 1847, which was truer to Shakespeare than earlier French versions but still introduced ‘improvements’ so by modern standards, it was a rather free adaptation of the original. No Fortinbras and no opening scene on the ramparts; a love scene for Hamlet and Ophelia added to the first act; Claudius does not send Hamlet to England, so Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not die; the rather striking ending has the ghost of Hamlet’s father reappear and condemn Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes as they are dying.

The opera was premiered at the Paris Opera in 1868. Hamlet was sung by the baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure because no suitable tenor could be found (though the tenor version was eventually premiered in 2025). The opera was staged, in Italian, in London in 1869 and went on to be staged in Leipzig, Budapest, Brussels, Prague, New York City, Saint Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna within five years of the Paris premiere. A shorter version of the Finale with Hamlet’s death is associated with the London performances but there is no record that this version was performed in Thomas’s lifetime. The role of Ophélie was a great favourite of Nelly Melba and reputedly when she sang the role, the opera ended with her mad scene!

In 1980, the fledgling Buxton Festival presented a production of Thomas’ Hamlet (with Thomas Allen in the title role). Since then, sightings of the opera in the UK have been relatively rare. Covent Garden presented it in 2003, for the first time since 1910 (!) and Opera North gave it in 1995, but it remains a rarity, dependent on the right baritone and soprano. Buxton returned to the opera in 2025 in a production directed by Jack Furness [see my review].

It was thus heartening to find Chelsea Opera Group (COG) presenting the work at Cadogan Hall on Sunday 1 November 2026 (the same weekend as Gothic Opera unearthed another French rarity, Halévy’s La Dame de Pique, see our review]. COG’s conductor was Jonathon Cole-Swinard (Head of Music and Chorus Director at Garsington Opera). Jacques Imbrailo was Hamlet [following on from his Pelléas in Aldeburgh earlier this year, see our review, and anticipating his Oreste in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride at ENO] with Haegee Lee as Ophélie [last seen as Lakmé with COG in 2024, see my review]. Jay Broadhurst was Laërte [last seen with COG in Verdi’s Macbeth last year when he sang Malcolm and jumped in as Macduff]. Richard Wiegold and Grace Durham were Claudius and Gertrude, with Ruari Bowen as Marcellus/Grave Digger, Malachy Frame as Horatio/Grave Digger, and Thomas D Hopkinson as the Ghost.

Thomas’ Hamlet is a highly effective piece of musical theatre providing you forget about the complexity and depth of Shakespeare’s original. Thomas has crafted two outstanding solo parts, Hamlet and Ophélie. At Cadogan Hall both Jacques Imbrailo and Haegee Lee seized all the opportunities, and the performance was well worth it for them alone. Thankfully, however, Jonathon Cole-Swinard and his forces brought out much else of the work’s richness.

It has to be admitted, however, that stretches of the opera are somewhat more generic and the piece does not quite sustain the highest level of imagination throughout. There are the usual opera tropes, a mad scene for Ophélie, a drinking song for Hamlet, but the focus on Hamlet and the remarkable way he dominates the opera is something new for 19th century French opera and you feel that Massenet’s Werther might have been rather different without the old opera’s example.

Whilst the opening and closing scenes of the opera have a focus firmly on Hamlet and Ophélie, what Thomas also does is create some terrific operatic ensembles and the strength of Chelsea Opera Group’s casting meant that these really crackled with energy. In Act Two, the players scene featured Thomas’s innovative use of the saxophone thus creating a sense of aural tension though the players scene itself with its dumb-show with only whispered comments from the protagonists is tricky to bring off in concert. Thankfully, Thomas ends this with a terrific operatic ensemble, and here all concerned really did let rip, the earlier tension being released in a very satisfyingly operatic way.

But Act Three is the real heart of the opera as Thomas and his librettists created a series of tense encounters. Imbrailo’s neo-Shakespearean solo (‘To be or not to be’ in French!) led to the strange yet powerful duet as Hamlet overheard Claudius (Richard Wiegold) praying, admitting his guilt yet Hamlet did nothing. There followed the trio for Hamlet (Imbrailo), Gertrude (Grace Durham) and Ophélie (Lee) which Thomas turns into one of the most powerful moments in the opera. Gertrude is a somewhat attenuated role, but Durham made the most of it and here she was positively thrilling, the engine of this terrific trio. In a rather Rossinian manner, the trio turns into a duo (as Ophélie is dismissed). Imbrailo and Durham both revelled in the tension here as Gertrude finally admits her guilt. But this is opera, and Thomas D Hopkinson’s Ghost reappeared on the balcony above the stage for a visual coup, though I had wished Hopkinson was vocally more stentorian here.

From his first entry, Jacques Imbrailo made a vocally seductive and compelling anti-hero. He sang Thomas’s vocal lines with beauty and suppleness of phrasing which rendered them finely sophisticated. Yet his diction was superb, and as Hamlet gradually ties himself in knots thanks to the revelation of the Ghost (Thomas D Hopkinson), and then Claudius’s (Richard Wiegold) clear admission of guilt, Imbrailo became more and more intense. This was a persuasive and unassailable performance that elevated Thomas’s opera to the ultimate.

If the role of Hamlet allowed Imbrailo to explore the role with some subtlety, Ophélie allowed less scope. Hagee Lee’s lyric coloratura combined vibrancy and ease, she brought the rather limited character alive. Her duet with Imbrailo’s Hamlet in Act One was rather a standard French opera trope, but the two definitely seduced us if not each other. In Act Three, Lee delivered what drama Thomas allowed her, but the focus was clearly on Act Four’s mad scene. Here Lee abandoned her score entirely and gave us a wonderfully convincing dramatic scene enlivened by her vibrant coloratura. This is not the ‘silver trumpet’ of Melba’s account of this role [available on YouTube] but a vividly coloured and intense lyric style.

At the end of this scene Ophélie dies and thus Gertrude (Durham) is denied her big solo ‘There is a willow grows aslant a brook’. Instead the opera canters to a close quickly, including a funeral procession that seems inspired by the final act of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti’s French version premiered in Paris in 1839). The return of the Ghost makes complete sense in a dramatic operatic way!

Grace Durham impressed as Gertrude, not just because of her powerhouse performance in Act Three but throughout the opera she made the most of very little. Durham’s was a very alert performance, her face and eyes filling in the gaps in Gertrude’s music. It helped that she was partnered by Richard Wiegold’s fierce and rather uptight Claudius. It was easy not to like this Claudius, which made his prayer scene in Act Three all the more moving.

As Laërte, tenor Jay Broadhurst definitely got the short straw. With the transformation of the title role into a baritone, Laërte became the only major tenor role. However the drama allowed no expansion. Much like Valentin in Faust, Laërte bids Hamlet look after his sister before leaving court (for Norway), only to return in Act Five to find everything has gone to hell in a hand-cart. Broadhurst made a vibrant Laërte, singing with power and style, making his return rather compelling. Laërte and Ophélie’s father, Polonius is a tiny (yet important role), here creditably sung by chorus members Kevin Hollands.

Ruairi Bowen and Malachy Frame made the most of their largely dialogue moments as Marcellus and Horatio. The two characters have important dramatic purposes though are not musically memorable, however Bowen and Frame made it work admirably with Bowen’s role seeming to be the provision of ringing top notes in ensembles. And then in Act Five they returned with a bon bouche, as the two took over as grave diggers with their delightful duet. Thomas D Hopkinson, singing always from the balcony, made a striking Ghost though he could have made more of his vocal contributions. I don’t think operatic ghosts should ever be discreet!

The chorus writing is not particularly sophisticated, Thomas expects them to mainly be jolly celebrating courtiers and they did that with alacrity. It is in the orchestra that Thomas concentrated all his more sophisticated efforts. It uses a big orchestra (the Paris Opera orchestra was the largest and best at the time), adding an extra harp, two cornets and saxophone to the usual full lineup, making for a very full stage.

The work began with a highly atmospheric prelude and throughout Thomas used interludes and imaginative orchestral writing to create the atmosphere. Cole-Swinard clearly loves the opera and he drew a finely sophisticated performance from his players. There were occasional fallible moments (the first horn seemed to be having a moment) but this did not interfere with the fine performance, sense of style and supple phrasing that the players gave us. Thomas’s opera has its overly bombastic moments, but the players made us realis that here was more to it.

Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet is a long opera and COG gave us a pretty full version. The biggest loss was the ballet music, though it was a shame to lose Gertrude and Claudius’s duet, and throughout the work there were little tucks. All the singers were dramatically credible and though simply strung in a line along the stage, none of them were score-bound and they managed to make the most of the various character interactions. With the high standard of solo contributions, the focus was inevitably on Jacques Imbrailo and Haegee Lee but the strength of this evening was the way their performances were embedded in a whole that made this Hamlet a most satisfying evening.