Goodnight, sweet ladies was commissioned by The Earl and Countess of Harewood in 1994, and first performed at Harewood House near Leeds on November 3rd 1995. Since 1990, I had been working my way towards an opera based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. This was commissioned by English National Opera in 1993, but was then dropped when the management changed shortly afterwards. In 1995 the Hamlet commission was picked up by Opera North (of which Harewood was then chairman), but the production was cancelled before it could be completed - once again because of a change of personnel at the top. So my Hamlet fell victim to a game of bureaucratic musical chairs, and was never completed.

Goodnight, sweet ladies began life as a sketch for Ophelia's role in the opera; but it is also, in the words of her brother Laertes, "a document in madness" - a case-study of mental collapse. In Ophelia's case there is ample reason for her breakdown: she knows Hamlet loves her; yet he has turned against her, for reasons she cannot understand. To make matters worse, she has discovered she is pregnant, and had been plucking up the courage to break this to Hamlet before he shattered her world in the "Get thee to a nunnery!" scene. The idea that she was pregnant with Hamlet's child is speculative; but it would certainly help explain her mental collapse. Moreover, the man she loves has just killed her father. It is hard to imagine a more traumatic set of circumstances - or one more likely to tip a young woman's mind into madness.

The texts of the first three songs are taken from Shakespeare's play. The fourth song, Voce mea, is not a setting of Shakespeare. The Latin text (from the psalms) and the melodic line are taken from a motet by Cipriano de Rore. Ophelia's death (or rather her final plunge towards death) takes place at the end of the third song, which is not so much a song as a collection of disjointed ballad-fragments. In the fourth song she is already dead, and at peace with herself.

Giles Swayne 2025