Concrete Playground

It seems the New York Metropolitan Opera has caught wind of what those clever fellows over at the British National Theatre have been up to; they’ve launched their own live, high-definition screenings of productions for the delight of international audiences.

As with London, New York has too pesky a time difference for Sydneysiders to see the shows live, but instead you can while away an afternoon at the Chauvel, the Hayden Orpheum or the Dendy Opera Quays for Ambroise Thomas’s lauded adaptation of Hamlet. Inspired by Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Thomas’s 1868 opera is best known for extending Ophelia’s descent into madness in a gripping scene celebrated in operatic circles for centuries.