Composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn are retelling Shakespeare’s Hamlet as an opera. In this bonus podcast episode, we’re eavesdropping on a specially recorded conversation between actor Samuel West, who has played Hamlet to great acclaim at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and British tenor Allan Clayton who is about to take up the role of the Danish Prince in this new opera version. Recorded February 2017.

Presenter: Katie Derham​​Produced by Katherine Godfrey for Whistledown Productions for Glyndebourne Festival 2017

Musical extracts are from Brett Dean’s From Melodious Lay, commissioned and recorded by BBC Radio 3 and given its world premiere by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joshua Weilerstein at the Barbican on Tuesday 1 November 2016. With thanks to the Barbican Centre and the Corporation of London. Music is courtesy of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited.

Image: Allan Clayton (Hamlet) Photographer: Richard Hubert Smith