Brett Dean
“And once I played Ophelia” Brett Dean “And once I played Ophelia”

With his second opera Hamlet (2017), Brett Dean turned to the world of William Shakespeare. Premiered at Glyndebourne and subsequently performed in New York, Adelaide, Munich, and Cologne, the work is no historical spectacle. Dean and his librettist, Matthew Jocelyn, fashioned Shakespeare’s tragedy into a vital stage work, which received the International Opera Award for Best World Premiere in 2018.

The process of gathering material led Dean to a series of preliminary studies and side works, among them the String Quartet No. 2 And once I played Ophelia, premiered in 2014. The title – not a direct quotation from Shakespeare’s play – is ambiguous: Ophelia plays herself, searching for her role. But the performers also “play” – that is, make music as – “Ophelia”, this thoroughly musicalised Shakespearean figure.

Dean’s musical language is characterised by strong gestural vividness, energy-charged climaxes, and at times downright audacious virtuosity. Yet he also leaves room for dreamlike moments of inward contemplation. Both characteristics – virtuosity and introspection – apply to Ophelia. Many composers have been inspired by Ophelia’s madness. Dean, however, is interested in the images of Ophelia created by the other characters in Shakespeare’s play – images the young woman comes to adopt as her own. In the end, these projections and insults are what destroy her: “And perhaps, just perhaps, Ophelia drowns not from a romantically-fed whim or madness, but simply because of the pure weight of the words others say about her caught irrevocably in her pockets,” says Brett Dean. 

The soprano’s text in Dean’s work quotes not only Ophelia’s own lines, but also lines spoken about her by Hamlet, Polonius, and Gertrude. Among them is Hamlet’s insult “Get thee to a nunnery” – meaning that she should go to a convent to escape the sin and corruption of the world (or, in the slang of Shakespeare’s time, to a brothel) – lines she retraces breathlessly, stammering them out. In memories and reflections, Ophelia listens to these words addressed to her; again and again she relives their wounds. In the five movements, Dean does not portray Ophelia as a passively suffering victim, but as a “feistier personality” who courageously crosses boundaries. Ophelia is thus shown with many vocal facets: from guttural groans and quarter-tone cries of lament to a broad lyrical arch reaching up to high f⁴, the soloist faces a formidable virtuoso challenge. She dissects words with a knife, reassembling them with gurgling and clicking sounds or with hoarse whispers. The strings respond with the finest gradations: noise-based bowing techniques accompany her search for identity in the first piece; lullaby-like consolations bear her to the grave.

In 2017, Dean arranged And once I played Ophelia for soprano and string orchestra. With an added double-bass part, the theatrical character of the work comes strikingly into its own in this expanded sound space.