First performed in 1865, Amleto ("Hamlet") represented a radical new development in Italian opera, the nuovo melodramma. Composer Franco Faccio and his librettist Arrigo Boito sought a greater degree of musical unity in staged productions and a more equal relationship between text and music. In Hamlet, a play that many then considered un-operatic, they found the perfect medium through which to explore the work’s philosophical and dramatic power - not least the great set-piece scenes: Amleto’s soliloquy "Essere o non essere!" ("To be or not to be"), Ofelia’s Mad Scene and the fight scenes - in a way that strikingly prefigures the verismo operas yet to come. © Naxos