Adapting the Bard: Shakespeare on the Operatic Stage
“Adaptation is repetition, but repetition without replication,” writes theorist Linda Hutcheon. In other words, every adapter tells the story again—but never the same way twice. Opera is a particularly revealing laboratory for this idea, because music can compress, expand, or even contradict a play’s surface meaning: an aria lingers on a single thought; an ensemble lets multiple characters “speak” at once; an orchestral color can tilt a scene from irony to sincerity in a heartbeat.
The enduring genius of William Shakespeare has inspired a remarkable lineage of operas. In fact, there are over 200 operas based on Shakespeare’s works, though less than a dozen would likely be considered part of the core opera repertoire. Our upcoming “Shakespeare Sings” Discovery Concert has been curated to shine a light on this rich operatic legacy – far beyond the few Shakespeare operas that are most frequently performed. Leading up to our new production of Salieri’s Falstaff in December, it is my hope that this concert will give you a deeper appreciation for the extraordinary range of musical storytelling that composers and librettists have brought to the Bard’s works.
Adapting Shakespeare into opera has never been easy. The very qualities that make his plays so rich—their extended speeches, intricate wordplay, and layered subplots—can become obstacles when set to music. Because it takes longer to sing than to speak, a Shakespeare play can easily become an unwieldy opera if handled too literally. Opera often benefits from condensation and clarity. At the same time, Shakespeare’s language is already profoundly musical. Any composer who sets it directly must avoid competing with that inherent musicality, while any translator or adaptor faces the delicate task of deciding how much of the language’s spirit can or should be preserved. A libretto, after all, is shaped as much by its form and cadence as by the story and structure it provides for the composer.
Yet despite these challenges, Shakespeare’s canon has proven one of opera’s most fruitful sources of inspiration. From the earliest sung adaptations by Purcell and Gasparini (the latter of which we will explore during this concert), opera composers in every era have been drawn to the Bard’s stories. It is remarkable to realize the scale of Shakespeare’s influence: not only has he defined the spoken stage, but he has also left a profound and lasting mark on the lyric stage.
The Many Faces of Falstaff
One of Shakespeare’s most beloved comic characters, Sir John Falstaff, has proven irresistible to opera composers. It may come as a surprise that Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff (1893) was not the first operatic Falstaff. Nearly a century earlier, Antonio Salieri composed Falstaff, ossia Le tre burle (Falstaff, or The Three Tricks), which premiered in 1799. Salieri’s Falstaff is a dramma giocoso (“playful drama”), with a libretto by Carlo Prospero Defranceschi. In their version, as in the play, the pompous knight Falstaff attempts to seduce two married women for money, only to be outwitted and humiliated by their clever “three tricks.” It’s a fast-paced comedy, delivered with tuneful Viennese classical elegance. Salieri’s Falstaff was warmly received at its Vienna premiere. Multiple arias were encored and Beethoven wrote piano variations on one of its duets shortly thereafter. Though it later fell into obscurity as tastes shifted, its wit, elegant scoring, and inventive ensembles make it ripe for revival today, offering audiences a lively alternative perspective on Shakespeare’s comic knight.
The 19th century brought more Falstaffs. In 1849, Otto Nicolai composed Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor) to a German libretto by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal. Nicolai had once declared that only Mozart could do justice to Shakespeare, yet he does not appear to have been phased by the challenge! His opera features many witty ensembles and sparkling orchestration, along with one of the most beloved tenor arias, "Horch, die Lerche singt im Hain," which has been recorded by almost every lyric tenor at one point or another! Nicolai’s opera remains a staple in Germany, and COT produced an English adaptation of the opera in 1990.
Moving into the 20th century, English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams offered his own take on the story with Sir John in Love, which premiered 1929. Vaughan Williams not only composed the music but also assembled the libretto himself, drawing from Shakespeare’s text and other Elizabethan writers. Sir John in Love presents Falstaff’s misadventures in an English pastoral vein, even incorporating traditional folk tunes, most famously, the soulful ballad “Greensleeves,” which he weaves into the score. By using Shakespeare’s original language and English folk melodies, Vaughan Williams gave his opera a distinctly English identity.
The pinnacle of Falstaff’s operatic life is certainly Verdi’s late masterpiece Falstaff. With an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, Verdi’s Falstaff was based on The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2. Boito, a scholarly librettist, cleverly blended these sources to deepen Falstaff’s character, bringing in, for example, Falstaff’s famous soliloquy on honor from the history play. Verdi’s Falstaff is a fast-moving comedic opera that nevertheless has moments of poignancy and reflection – a mix of buffa fun and human insight reminiscent of Shakespeare’s own blend of humor and heart. Fittingly, Verdi ended his opera (and his career) with an exuberant fugue on the line “Tutto nel mondo è burla” (“All the world’s a joke”), celebrating the spirit of comedy.
“Shakespeare Sings” will feature excerpts from Falstaff by both Salieri and Verdi (two very different treatments of the same rascal), as well as from Nicolai’s and Vaughan Williams’ works – allowing the audience to hear how Falstaff has evolved musically from 18th-century Vienna to 19th-century Milan to 20th-century London. It’s a remarkable journey for one larger-than-life character, and it reminds us that Shakespeare’s comic inventions can inspire an extraordinary range of approaches to musical storytelling!
Star-Crossed Lovers: Romeo and Juliet in Opera
Perhaps no Shakespearean tale has attracted opera composers more than Romeo and Juliet. The tragic story of “star-crossed” young lovers has an emotional directness and universality that seems ideal for musical treatment. Dozens of operas based on Romeo and Juliet have been written, but only a couple of operatic versions truly endure today. That is unfortunate, because there are some beautiful and deeply moving discoveries to be made.
One of the earliest successful adaptations is Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi from 1830. Bellini’s opera (with a libretto by Felice Romani) is actually not a straightforward adaptation of Shakespeare. Romani actually drew on Italian sources, including a novella by Matteo Bandello and a play by Luigi Scevola, rather than Shakespeare’s play itself. As a result, the opera differs in plot details: there is no balcony scene, no Mercutio or Benvolio, and Juliet’s cousin Tybalt (Tebaldo) is recast as her betrothed suitor rather than simply a kinsman. Bellini’s Capuleti focuses on the conflict between the two families and the secret love between Giulietta and Romeo amid a brewing war. Romeo is written as a mezzo-soprano “trouser role”—a female singer portraying a young man—which gives the love music in Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi its unique sound. Because Romeo and Giulietta sing in nearly the same range, their duets have an unusually intimate, blended quality. Bellini’s choice was partly practical, as he had to work with the singers available at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice under a tight deadline. But it also fit within a long tradition. For centuries, leading male roles were often given to high voices, a custom carried over from the castrati to the mezzo-soprano in bel canto works. But in Bellini’s hands, this casting became more than convention. It created the opera’s defining vocal dynamic, making the lovers’ duets some of the most tender and lyrical in the repertoire.
The French composer Charles Gounod wrote perhaps the most famous Romeo and Juliet opera with his Roméo et Juliette (1867). Gounod’s libretto, by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, sticks closer to Shakespeare’s plot and gives ample opportunity for musical romance. The opera is renowned for its beautiful duets between the lovers and for each of the young lover’s ardent arias. Gounod’s sensuous, melodic, approach turned out to be perfectly suited to the love story. Roméo et Juliette quickly entered the international repertoire and has remained there ever since. It distills the tragedy to its romantic essence and takes advantage of the theatrical and musical opportunities that only opera can provide. The opera famously ends with the two lovers awakening briefly in the tomb for one final duet before dying in each other’s arms – a poetic liberty that you will not find in the play, but one that provides a transcendent musical closing to the drama.
Yet Gounod and Bellini are just the tip of the iceberg. Many other Romeo and Juliet operas have been composed, even if they are rarely heard today. For example, Giulietta e Romeo (1922) by Riccardo Zandonai and Romeo und Julia (1940) by Heinrich Sutermeister were both incredibly popular when they first appeared, and they are certainly works that deserve to be better known. Zandonai’s version, with libretto by Arturo Rossato, took inspiration from the Italian novella by Luigi da Porto (an earlier source of the story). Its music is in the lush late-Romantic verismo style, full of passionate outbursts and gorgeous extended melodies with rich orchestration. Sutermeister’s opera, for which the composer himself wrote the libretto, premiered in Dresden during World War II and was praised by conductors like Karl Böhm for its dramatic vitality. This work was a new discovery for me as I was preparing for our concert, and I must admit that I have fallen in love with Sutermeister’s opera. In it, you can hear the influence of his teacher, Carl Orff, but also echoes of the French impressionist tradition, Stravinsky-like orchestral gestures, and sweeping musical gestures that remind me a lot of Prokofiev’s beloved full-length ballets.
It is unfortunate that Bellini and Gounod scores, along with Bernstein’s West Side Story, have eclipsed other operatic Romeos in the United States. Indeed, Zandonai’s and Sutermeister’s Romeo and Juliet operas deserve to be performed more often, yet are now rarities known mostly to enthusiasts. Still, these pieces are fascinating to rediscover because each reflects its era’s musical approach to Shakespeare’s timeless love story. “Shakespeare Sings” gives us a chance to hear excerpts from all four of these operas, holding their own mirrors to Shakespeare’s tale and reflecting it through their own unique voices.
Kings, Ghosts, and Jealousy: Shakespeare’s Tragedies in Opera
Beyond Falstaffian comedy and romantic tragedy, our upcoming concert also explores operas based on Shakespeare’s darker tales – Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, and more – where murder, ambition, and supernatural elements take center stage. Shakespeare’s tragedies present special challenges and exciting opportunities for opera writers. How can one most effectively convey these plays’ complex psychological struggles and intricate plots within the lyrical, time-bending form of opera? Some composers and librettists boldly reinvented the plays, while others strove for unprecedented fidelity.
Macbeth was one of the earliest Shakespeare tragedies to receive a successful operatic treatment. Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth (1847, revised 1865) broke new ground in its day, as it was one of the first Italian operas not centered on a love story but on a dark political drama. Verdi worked with librettist Francesco Maria Piave (and advisor Andrea Maffei) to adapt Shakespeare’s play, and Verdi was passionately involved in every aspect of the adaptation. He famously urged that Lady Macbeth’s singing should have a harsh, unnatural quality – she should sing “not beautifully – not at all”, wanting her voice to convey evil even at the expense of vocal prettiness. Verdi also recognized that some of Shakespeare’s text was inherently musical. As scholar Chantal Schütz notes, Verdi saw that Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies “read exactly like opera solos.” They were practically made to be arias, and indeed Verdi turned them into show-stopping moments, such as Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking “mad scene” scene. Verdi’s Macbeth is a taut, gothic work that includes thrilling choruses of witches and powerful duets for the scheming Macbeths. It remains a repertoire staple, especially after Verdi’s own revisions added a magnificent final chorus for the triumph of the Scottish rebels. Verdi’s Macbeth showed that Shakespearean tragedy could be distilled into potent opera without losing its dramatic punch.
But Verdi wasn’t the only composer drawn to Macbeth. In 1910, Ernest Bloch composed his opera Macbeth to a French libretto by Edmond Fleg, which Chicago Opera Theater produced in 2014. Bloch’s Macbeth took an even more experimental approach. The orchestra carries much of the psychological weight (with rich Wagnerian harmonies), while the vocal lines are often more declamatory. Bloch’s opera never entered the mainstream, but it’s an intriguing example of a non-literal adaptation that captures the spirit of Shakespeare’s tragedy through symphonic as well as vocal means.
At the opposite extreme, a brand-new work that we are featuring on the program is composer Johanny Navarro and librettist Marcus Yi’s Working for the Macbeths, which is currently in development at American Lyric Theater. This playful work shows just how freely artists can riff on Shakespeare. Written in the spirit of Monty Python, this comic opera turns the tragedy on its head, imagining the events of Macbeth from the perspective of a clever servant (Lady Macbeth’s lady-in-waiting) who, upon hearing the witches’ prophecy, is determined to prevent the bloody outcome and give the Macbeths a happy ending. In a farcical twist, fate itself becomes a character to be challenged. Navarro and Yi’s piece is essentially a parody that lovingly lampoons the original. It reminds us that adaptation need not always be reverent: sometimes it can be playful and subversive, finding comedy in even the darkest corners of Shakespeare. Placing this new work alongside Verdi’s Macbeth on our concert will be especially illuminating and entertaining – demonstrating how the same source can yield completely different perspectives, depending on the adaptors’ angle.
Another Shakespearean figure who looms large in opera history is Hamlet. In Shakespeare’s theater, Hamlet is a lengthy, introspective play driven by subtle psychology; in opera, where action and emotion usually must be externalized, the brooding indecision of Prince Hamlet can be challenging to convey. Nonetheless, Hamlet’s story has tempted composers from the 18th century to today. The very first Hamlet opera was Francesco Gasparini’s Ambleto, which premiered in Venice in 1705, to a libretto by Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Pariati. Their libretto was not drawn directly from Shakespeare’s English text, but adapted through continental retellings (notably François de Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques, itself based on Saxo Grammaticus’ medieval chronicle). This Baroque Hamlet (sung in Italian and featuring star castrato singers) retains character names and a revenge framework recognizable from Shakespeare, but reshapes the tale heavily to fit opera seria conventions. Early 18th-century audiences expected reconciliations and love intrigues, so the tragedy was transformed into something closer to heroic drama with a moral resolution. Ambleto was performed across Europe in the early 18th century, but then disappeared. It was only rediscovered in the second half of the 20th century, revealing a rare Baroque take on the Dane.
By contrast, in the 19th century, composers sought to tackle Hamlet in the grand opera tradition. The most notable example is Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré (who also wrote the libretto for Gounod’s Roméo). Thomas’s Hamlet enjoyed great success following its premiere in 1868. It features a lush, tuneful score and the famous showpiece “Mad Scene” for Ophelia. However, it also alters the ending: in the original version, Hamlet survives and is crowned king - a change that horrified Shakespeare purists! Thomas’s Hamlet fell out of favor for much of the 20th century, often “mocked” for its perceived mangling of Shakespeare, though it has seen some revivals in recent decades (often with the ending adjusted to be more tragic).
While we are not featuring a scene from Thomas’s Hamlet on the program, we are excited to share an even more faithful effort at adaptation that came from Italian composer Franco Faccio, who teamed with librettist Arrigo Boito (the same Boito later famous for writing the libretti to Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff) to create Amleto in 1865. Boito’s libretto for Amleto was remarkably Shakespearean in spirit, and Faccio’s music strove for dramatic intensity. The premiere in 1865 was very promising, but a revival in 1871 collapsed when the lead tenor fell ill and gave a disastrous performance, leading the devastated Faccio to withdraw the opera entirely. Amleto vanished for nearly 150 years until its modern resurrection in 2014 by Chicago based conductor Anthony Barrese, whose critical edition led to Opera Southwest’s modern staged premiere, followed by multiple European productions. We are thrilled to be able to present a scene and trio from this opera thanks to Maestro Barrese’s efforts. While we can now appreciate Faccio and Boito’s opera in a fresh light, the troubled reception of its 1871 revival likely discouraged Verdi from attempting his own Hamlet. Verdi had long contemplated setting the play, but after seeing Faccio venture there first, he remarked, “Now, if King Lear is difficult, Hamlet is even more so… I do not give up all hope, however, that one day I can work on this masterpiece.” In the end, however, Verdi never wrote a Hamlet opera. The play’s operatic potential remains tantalizing yet troublesome. It is telling that even in the 21st century, when Australian composer Brett Dean successfully premiered his Hamlet in 2017 with a libretto by Matthew Jocelyn to critical acclaim, reviewers still acknowledged the long shadow of failures and near-misses that haunted Hamlet’s operatic history.
Of course, no discussion of Shakespearean opera would be complete without Othello, the tragedy of jealousy. Othello has inspired at least two important operas – one by Gioachino Rossini and one by Giuseppe Verdi – illustrating how radically different two adaptations of the same play can be. Rossini’s Otello premiered in 1816 in Naples, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Berio di Salsa. Because early 19th-century Italian opera had its own conventions, Berio’s libretto made significant alterations to Shakespeare: the entire opera is set in Venice (eliminating the military Cyprus setting and war backdrop), and the role of Shakespeare’s Roderigo (rendered as “Rodrigo”) is greatly expanded into a principal tenor rival to Desdemona. Rossini’s original ending is tragic (Otello kills Desdemona and in many accounts then kills himself); but 19th-century productions sometimes substituted altered finales with different endings. Despite these changes, Rossini’s Otello was very popular in the 19th century, in part because it features dazzling vocal writing (including a famous “Willow Song” and prayer for Desdemona) and an unusual casting of three tenor roles (Otello, Iago, Rodrigo) that makes for an incredible evening of virtuoso singing.
Decades later, Verdi and Boito created what is often considered the ultimate Shakespeare opera in 1887. Verdi’s Otello stays much closer to Shakespeare’s narrative and tone. Boito’s text cleverly distilled Shakespeare’s Othello into a tight dramatic poem, even preserving key lines from the play in poetic translation. Verdi responded with a score of towering intensity; from the opening storm to Otello’s final kiss on Desdemona’s lifeless body, the opera Otello is an almost cinematic thrill ride of jealousy, love, and betrayal. The fact that Verdi was in his seventies when he wrote it speaks to his reverence for the Bard. Otello became an instant classic and remains a staple of opera houses worldwide.
Finally, our exploration of tragic adaptations includes a more unusual Shakespearean work: Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is an expansive, multi-scene historical tragedy – a challenge for any opera composer. American composer Samuel Barber accepted that challenge for the opening of New York’s new Metropolitan Opera House in 1966. His opera Antony and Cleopatra, with a libretto adapted from Shakespeare by filmmaker and director Franco Zeffirelli (and later revised by Gian Carlo Menotti), aimed to capture the grand scale and passion of the play. The premiere, unfortunately, was marred by over-the-top staging, and the opera was initially met with mixed reviews. Barber later streamlined the work in 1975, and it has since been performed successfully in its tighter form. Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra features achingly beautiful arias for Cleopatra and powerful choral scenes for the epic battles and pageantry. It represents the mid-20th-century American romantic style, with lush harmonies and sweeping orchestration, applied directly to Shakespeare’s text.
Not all operas on this story, however, actually draw from Shakespeare. Earlier treatments, such as Johann Adolf Hasse’s Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra from 1725, a serenata for two singers that was recently performed by Chicago’s Haymarket Opera Company, and Domenico Cimarosa’s Antony and Cleopatra, written in 1789 for Catherine the Great’s court in St. Petersburg, were based on classical and historical sources like Plutarch’s Lives rather than Shakespeare’s play. By contrast, most recently John Adams returned to Shakespeare in his Antony and Cleopatra for a commission by San Francisco Opera in 2022, creating a libretto that draws primarily on Shakespeare but also incorporates Plutarch and other ancient texts.
Each of these works reflects its own era: Hasse’s elegant Baroque duets, Cimarosa’s Classical style tailored to imperial spectacle, Barber’s sweeping American romanticism in direct dialogue with Shakespeare, and Adams’s layered minimalist-modern language blending Shakespeare with antiquity. On our concert, we will feature an aria from Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, giving audiences the chance to hear how Shakespeare is transformed into music of striking lyrical beauty and dramatic power.
Magic, Mischief, and More: Other Shakespearean Inspirations
In addition to the major comedies and tragedies, Shakespeare’s works of fantasy and intrigue have also made their way into opera. One shining example is Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960). Britten, working with his partner Peter Pears as co-librettist, crafted an English-language opera directly from Shakespeare’s text (albeit heavily abridged). In an unusual move, Britten chose to open his opera not in Athens but in the mysterious forest, and he maintained the focus on the fairy magic and the comic confusions between the pairs of lovers. Much of Shakespeare’s original poetry is set to music verbatim, making Britten’s Dream one of the most textually faithful Shakespeare operas ever written. However, the tone of the play is transformed by Britten’s music into something uniquely enchanting. The fairies have shimmering, otherworldly music, with Oberon cast famously as a countertenor, giving him an ethereal, unearthly sound; while the rustic “Mechanicals” get folksy, comedic melodies. The result is an opera that feels as dreamlike and sly as the play itself, a work many consider Britten’s comic masterpiece. Importantly, A Midsummer Night’s Dream has become one of the few modern (post-1950) operas on a Shakespeare subject to enter the standard repertoire. It is frequently performed and beloved for its inventive score and adhering so closely to both the word and spirit of Shakespeare. Historically, one could say Britten closed a circle. Back in 1692, The Fairy Queen by Purcell had been the first semi-operatic take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, consisting of musical masques inserted between scenes of the play. Purcell’s Fairy Queen was essentially a collection of musical interludes (fairy songs, dances, etc.) accompanying a greatly shortened version of Shakespeare’s comedy. It was a hit in its time but did not survive long in the repertoire. Over 250 years later, Britten’s Dream gave the world a fully-formed opera that stands on its own – a testament to the play’s enduring magic and its adaptability to musical re-imagining. In our concert, Bottom’s comic aria after his transformation will provide us with a glimpse of both the magical and comic sides Shakespeare in opera.
Another intriguing adaptation featured in the concert comes from The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare’s play blends comic elements with tense drama, but at its core is the figure of Shylock, a Jewish moneylender whose portrayal has long been fraught with controversy. The role is both one of the few substantial Jewish characters in early modern drama and a lightning rod for questions of antisemitism, mercy, and justice—making the play particularly complex. It wasn’t until the 20th century that this work received significant operatic attention. French composer Reynaldo Hahn premiered Le Marchand de Venise in 1935 at the Paris Opéra, with a libretto by Miguel Zamacoïs closely based on the play. Hahn’s opera is a lavish, literal-minded adaptation—so much so that one critic observed that it (along with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s later 1961 operatic version of the same play) became “disproportionately lengthy” by operatic standards. Still, Hahn’s Merchant contains elegant and powerful music in a late-Romantic French idiom. Hahn’s work had some initial success. It was revived in 1949 and 1950 in Paris, but has since faded from the stage, with only rare revivals, including the American premiere by Portland Opera in 1996. Interestingly, there remains strong interest in how The Merchant of Venice can sing on the opera stage. In 2013, Polish-English composer André Tchaikowsky’s operatic adaptation earned considerable acclaim, reimagining Shylock’s world with striking contemporary resonance. Its success demonstrates that even Shakespeare’s so-called “problem plays” continue to captivate opera composers, proving that under the right circumstances they can yield works of remarkable dramatic and musical power. On our concert, we will explore the character of Shylock through a 1930s musical lens in Hahn’s aria, “Je les hais” (“I hate them”), where the character’s fury at his mistreatment is given voice.
The Bard’s Operatic Afterlife
From Falstaff to Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and beyond, our Shakespeare Sings Discovery Concert explores a remarkable array of operatic works. All are inspired by the same playwright, yet each is refracted through the imaginations of different composers and librettists and the conventions of their time. This journey through four centuries of music theater shows that there is no single way to adapt Shakespeare; rather, adaptation is an ongoing conversation between the original source material and the artists who are inspired by it. Some opera writers pay Shakespeare the compliment of fidelity, setting his words to music or preserving his plots with great care. Others take bold departures, inventing new endings, new characters, or even parodying the original.
Shakespeare himself often reflected on the power of music and imagination. In Twelfth Night, the Duke’s famous line—“If music be the food of love, play on”—acknowledges music as nourishment for our most powerful emotions. In The Merchant of Venice, Lorenzo warns that “The man that hath no music in himself… is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils,” affirming music’s role as a measure of humanity itself. And in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare offers a vision of the creative process itself: “The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.” These words remind us why his plays have so often inspired composers and librettists: they are already alive with rhythm, song, and theatrical imagination, inviting reinvention on the operatic stage.
Such liberties often drew criticism, with Byron and Auden offering sharp reminders of the purists’ perspective. Yet time has revealed that many adaptations uncover new truths and unexpected joys in the source material. Beyond the more than 200 direct operatic adaptations, Shakespeare’s influence ripples across the repertoire in subtler ways: a Romeo-and-Juliet-like love duet here, a Tempest-like shipwreck there. Our concert focuses on explicit adaptations, but it also opens our ears to the broader idea that Shakespeare’s storytelling transcends medium. His works can sing, dance, and speak, each form illuminating different facets of his genius.
By experiencing such a wide variety of scenes and arias together in one afternoon, I hope you will discover fresh insights into Shakespeare’s enduring adaptability and the remarkable creativity of the composers and librettists who bring his stories to life on the operatic stage. My ultimate takeaway from Shakespeare Sings is that Shakespeare’s genius is inexhaustible. Every era finds something urgent and relevant in his works. Opera, in particular, amplifies the poetry and emotion of Shakespeare, while inevitably reshaping the story in its own image. As listeners, we may leave with our understanding of the plays enriched, or with new questions stirred. That ongoing dialogue is precisely what this concert celebrates.
Our upcoming production of Salieri’s Falstaff—the opera that inspired this concert—offers a vivid reminder of the hidden treasures in Shakespeare’s operatic legacy. Long overshadowed by Verdi’s later work, Salieri’s opera reminds us that many Shakespeare-inspired operas once enjoyed popularity yet later fell into obscurity, but that doesn’t mean they don’t warrant our attention and enjoyment! By reviving such works and placing them in context, we gain a richer understanding of the breadth of Shakespeare’s influence on music theater. With open ears, we can hear Shakespeare’s characters singing through the ages. And when the curtain falls on our Shakespeare Sings concert, I hope you will be inspired to continue the journey—seeking out more discoveries from the vast, varied, and ever-surprising world of Shakespeare in opera.