“Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour” sing a soprano and mezzo-soprano sensuously, whereas round them, revelers glide easily throughout the mirrored room. The aria is taken into account to be probably the most well-known barcarolle—a tackle a conventional folks tune sung by Venetian gondoliers—in operatic historical past. Often, the piece is carried out by characters Giulietta (the love of the eponymous Hoffmann in The Tales of Hoffmann and, unbeknownst to him, a scheming courtesan) and Nicklausse (a ‘trouser position’ meant for a lady dressed as a younger man). Besides, in Olivier-award-winning director Damiano Michieletto’s manufacturing of Hoffmann on at London’s Royal Opera Home, Nicklausse is just not a girl or perhaps a man however, bizarrely, a parrot. Hoffmann’s dearest confidant and good friend, who with out exception is often a human, is a hen. The position was sung exquisitely by French-Canadian mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne, with cadences that introduced tears to my eyes regardless of my having heard The Tales of Hoffmann or Les Contes d’Hoffmann three dozen occasions earlier than, however the parrot costume was greater than a distraction; it was an annoyance.
However tears flowed as soon as extra on the portrayal of Antonia, Hoffmann’s doomed second love. The younger lady is bed-bound; she makes use of crutches and a wheelchair to mobilize. Pained is her countenance, for she remembers all too clearly her days of well being when she sang gaily, beloved Hoffmann and deliberate to turn out to be a well-known singer. As Antonia, sung arrestingly fantastically by Russian soprano Olga Pudova, grows weaker by the minute, she makes determined makes an attempt to maneuver throughout the ground and to show her frantic father fallacious about her prognosis. It’s no use, for she is going to expire. In an aria through which she visualizes her late mom, a ballerina comes onto the stage and performs. Reader, I wept. Brava Olga Pudova—for me, you stole the present.
Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez was in good voice and introduced the character of the romantically long-suffering Hoffmann to bear, adept at portraying the ecstasy of recent love and evocatively devastated when his romantic efforts resulted thrice in wreck. I used to be shocked, nevertheless, on the directorial determination to painting Hoffmann as an aged man in an extended grey wig within the opening scenes and on the finish. Within the libretto, Hoffmann is middle-aged on the very oldest, consuming and reveling together with his male comrades. Nonetheless, Flórez shook off his age and performed the younger, ardent Hoffmann very charmingly and effectively, depicting zeal and amorousness with well-paced aptitude.
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The Royal Opera Home has existed on its Covent Backyard web site in London since 1732. In that point, three buildings have stood as a replacement, the primary two having burnt down within the nineteenth century. The venue has lately rebranded to Royal Ballet and Opera to replicate the mixed firms that decision the constructing their residence. Right here, the Royal Ballet corps are used to splendid impact—dancers pirouetted by way of nearly each scene, with demons cavorting balletically whereas Hoffmann sang lamentations about his checkered previous. Little one dancers practiced on the barre whereas Hoffmann’s second love, Antonia, sang of her sorrow at being so unwell.
Franco-German composer Jacques Offenbach labored on The Tales of Hoffmann from 1877. An opera fantastique, it was his main preoccupation for a few years, however Offenbach would undergo from gout and eventually a deadly coronary heart assault earlier than the opening evening. Musically, Offenbach’s tunes are fairly often constructed upon a rising phrase and in a serious key, however, as The New Grove Dictionary of Opera notes, he achieved a outstanding number of temper by various the rhythmic sample.
The continued success of Hoffmann should be due, partially, to its alternatives for spectacle and the supernatural—the scene the place automaton Olympia (right here sung completely by Ermonela Jaho) sings and mechanically dances is a favourite with audiences worldwide. Nonetheless, I felt that the staging made the phrases of the libretto appear somewhat incongruous at occasions. To sing of turtle doves, as Antonia does within the second act, may be very a lot of the eighteenth century, but the wheelchair was of this century. I additionally discovered it disappointing that the third act was staged in a garish jazz membership, which made discuss of gondolas approaching somewhat a letdown when there have been none to be seen arriving on stage. At any fee, the opera was splendid: all in good voice and fantastically styled. Bravi tutti.
