Composer: Thomas, Ambroise (1811-1896)

Hamlet lives! Ambroise Thomas' operatic take on The Bard has a particularly French ending but that doesn't spoil this terrific revival in Paris. 

Top tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres dared to duel at the Concertgebouw. Both emerged victorious, and not just because of the volley of sensational top notes.

Fine soprano performances from Ruth Jenkins-Róbertsson and Victoria Simmonds can't save Ambroise Thomas's inanimate object of a plot. Thank goodness Wagner saved us from more of the same. 

When I heard that Nathan Gunn was opening Washington National Opera’s 2012-13 season Celebrity Series, I could not be more excited. Indeed, this American baritone, known in the musical world as “the opera divo”, represents everything that today’s opera fans look for in a singer: a beautiful voice, first-class acting, an appealing physique and of course, a great sense of humor.

Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet has riled and infuriated ever since its 1868 première, though for many it is merely an object of derision: one 1869 correspondent to the satirical magazine Punch admits not having seen the work but nevertheless disparages it as ‘Omelette’, a musical ‘burlesque’, and pillories Thomas’s fondness for drinking songs with the lines ‘To drink or not to drink? That