The drama of Ambroise Thomas’ “Hamlet” pales beside the behind- the-scenes maneuvering that got it to the Met on Tuesday.
After Natalie Dessay called in sick two weeks ago, the Met scrambled to book another Ophélie — Marlis Petersen — but the German soprano was singing in Europe until a few days before the premiere.
And so, while a standby rehearsed with the “Hamlet” cast, the company flew a music coach to Vienna to help Petersen cram. It then whisked the singer to New York where, barely 24 hours before curtain time, she jumped into a dress rehearsal.
After all that, it would be gratifying to declare Petersen’s debut a “star is born” moment. But, even given the last-minute fireworks, she was pretty much a nonstarter, her Ophélie hovering on the cusp of inaudibility in midrange and shrill on the highest notes.
Happily, Shakespeare’s tragic hero was in the expert hands of Simon Keenlyside, whose compact, flinty baritone made poetry of even the blandest phrases of Thomas’ music. His smoldering acting exploded into the evening’s only moment of exciting drama in the mad scene closing the first half.
Toby Spence’s debut in the role of Laerte suggested a fresh lyric tenor, and bass David Pittsinger boomed with authority as the Ghost.
Old pros James Morris (Claudius) and Jennifer Larmore (Gertrude) sounded, unsurprisingly, professional but old. Larmore’s “Mommie Dearest” overacting garnered a few unintentional laughs during Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser’s grimly minimalist production.
Amid dreary plastered walls and drab Victorian costumes, it fell to conductor Louis Langrée to restore some sense of the romantic to the 1868 score. His expansive leadership blossomed gorgeously in the last-act lament “Comme une pale fleur.”