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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
Tales of Hoffmann an Uneven Strategy, Better Performance
May 25, 2001
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By Heather Hadlock
West Bay Opera's new production of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann demonstrates the commonsense wisdom that "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The past 25 years have brought numerous claims that the Tales, left unfinished at the composer's death and cobbled together for performance by a series of editors and producers, is in need of repair. Three critical editions, each claiming to represent Offenbach's intentions, have aspired to supplant the well-known version that took shape in the decades after Offenbach's death. Companies setting out to perform the piece now have a multitude of options, especially in the opera's prologue, epilogue, and Venetian act (the tale of Giulietta).
West Bay has steered a conservative course, keeping such well-loved "inauthentic" numbers as the Diamond Aria and the sextet, while adding numbers to the prologue and epilogue. These additions are designed to enhance the Muse's dramatic importance and expand the mezzo-soprano's admittedly underwritten role.
The strategy has a mixed success. I was grateful for the intact "bad old version" of the Venetian act, which brought out the best from singers and orchestra. But the added scenes for the Muse contributed little but length. The opening number, in which the Muse explains her mission to save Hoffmann from the delusions of human love, gets the show off to a slow start. Heretical to say, but the impresario who cut this scene in 1881 knew what he was about.
If West Bay wanted to beef up the Muse/Nicklausse's role for the excellent mezzo, Elspeth Franks, they might have skipped the prologue and instead included Nicklausse's aria "Voice l'archet fremissant" in the Antonia act. This number (discovered by editor Fritz Oeser in the 1970s) is a real mezzo showpiece that allows the Muse's poetic self to shine briefly through her cynical disguise. As it is, Franks remained underused. Franks' is one fine performance among many. Tenor Gabriel Reoyo-Pazos, as Hoffmann, had a ringing, manly sound and Romantic good looks. (The male choristers were all coifed and made up in emulation of his "poetical" mop of curly hair and clipped beard.) His voice never flagged through the long and taxing evening. At his best in ardent declarations of love, he also brought a nice swagger to his cynical drinking songs. Karen Frankenstein, as Antonia, had the show's most beautiful voice and nuanced interpretation. She made this doomed heroine compelling and never fell into insipidity or cliché. Through her expressions and gestures, Frankenstein conveyed Antonia's frustration and resentment at being forbidden to sing. These rebellious emotions are not quite expressed in the character's gentle music, but are nonetheless essential for making sense of her susceptibility to Dr. Miracle's fatal urgings.
Bass Michael Morris, who played the four villains, was at his best as Dr. Miracle. His dark, menacing voice and humorless manner served this part well, whether he was baiting Antonia or frightening her father with pseudo-medical pronouncements. The men's trio, in which Dr Miracle "examines" the absent Antonia while Hoffmann and Crespel watch in terror and dismay, was a tour de force, matched but not surpassed by the dazzling final trio. Morris was again severe and menacing as Dapertutto, but did not quite produce the ravishing beauty of tone demanded by his aria "Scintille, diamant." As Coppelius, the vendor of magic lenses in the Olympia act, Morris was stiff and overly serious, missing the role's grotesque good cheer. Indeed this act as a whole tended to drag (except for the entr'acte, which conductor Henry Mollicone took at breakneck speed). Spalanzani's pattering dialogue was labored, as were the choral numbers. The chorus seemed physically hampered and slightly distracted by their fantastical cardboard cutout costumes. The bright spot in the act was Marina Lucia Torres as Olympia, who ripped through her Doll Song with great precision and verve. Her windup gestures during the song were funny and varied. She also switched effectively back and forth between singing and moving like a doll and like the real girl that the deluded Hoffmann thinks he sees.
Narelle Yeo, as Giulietta, the last of Hoffmann's three loves, brought a suitably voluptuous tone to the Barcarolle and dramatic urgency to her demands for Hoffmann's reflection. She had a fine voice and a smashing costume, fit for a kitsch Poppea. However, she seemed content to let her décolletage supply most of her characterization, and relied too heavily on such stock "sexy" gestures as a come-hither look and a languid twirling of her hair. Although Giulietta is supposed to represent purely carnal love, there was a striking lack of chemistry between her and Hoffmann. They kept each other at arm's length even as he rhapsodized, "Your perfumed breath caresses my lips and eyes." Set designer Jean-Francois Revon has lavished wonderful imagination and taste on the sets for the three tales. Each set is dominated by a motif: A giant eye frames the action of the Olympia act, signifying Hoffmann's visual delusion. The giant ear that forms the backdrop of the Antonia act symbolizes Antonia's vulnerability to music and also wittily underlines Frantz's deafness and Hoffmann's position as an eavesdropper. Giulietta's Venetian piazza is dominated by two huge tilting mirrors. Costume designer Callie Floor has created costumes that are marvelous, especially Olympia's honeycomb-pleated skirt, in which she looks like a delicious pink cupcake. The only exception is the Muse of Poetry, who in her oversized bathrobe and tatty white wig looks more like a caricature of Louis XIV than an Olympian.
The performance had the great virtue of getting better and more compelling as it went on. Tempi, diction, and pacing were not quite zingy enough in the opening comic scenes. The Muse's prologue and tavern scene never quite got off the ground, and even the Olympia act was sluggish. The strings especially lacked Offenbachian precision and zest in the first two acts, and had to be kept in line by the woodwinds, who showed a better grasp of the idiom. But with the Antonia act, the orchestra and singers hit their stride and never looked back. The ensembles got tighter and the voices freer as the emotions grew more and more extravagant. The climax came with the rousing strains of the Venetian act's sextet "Helas! Mon coeur" (a completely spurious number, added to the opera in 1907.) The epilogue, to which West Bay restored another number for the Muse, was attractive yet rather square and tame after the swirl of fantasy and nightmare that preceded it. (Heather Hadlock is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Stanford University. She is the author of Mad Loves: Women and Music in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Princeton University Press, 2000) ©2001 Heather Hadlock, all rights reserved |
