“The Ghosts of Hamlet,” Le Concert de l’Hostel Dieu with Roberta Mameli, soprano

The legend of Prince Hamlet is the basis for Shakespeare’s tragedy, but in the 18th century, the same tale inspired numerous Italian operas. Le Concert de l’Hostel Dieu, known for riveting performances of French Baroque music, presents a semi-staged evening of arias based on long-lost scores by George Frideric Handel and his contemporaries. Soprano Roberta Mameli, accompanied by a small string ensemble with harpsichord, portrays the romantic Veremonda (Shakespeare’s Ophelia) and Gerilda (Gertrude), Hamlet’s mother, who is torn between love for her son and passion for her cold and unfaithful husband.

Le Concert de l’Hostel Dieu was created in 1992, and its first concert was performed on the grounds of the centuries-old medical institution, the Grand Hôtel-Dieu, in Lyons, France. The ensemble concerts and recordings are well known across France and abroad for transposing the diversity of Baroque music into the modern era.

Read more: Around the myth of Hamlet, fragments of lost and found operas.