The life of Jacques Offenbach is nearly as complicated and tragic as his
last, and greatest work,
The Tales of Hoffmann. Jacques was
originally Jacob, born in 1819 in Cologne, the son of a jobbing Jewish
fiddler-cum-music-teacher. The son revealed such early talent that the
father made many sacrifices to send his son to study in Paris where he in
turn scraped a living as a ‘session’, in today’s idiom, cellist. At the time
of the Paris 1855 World Exhibition, frustrated by inability to get his
compositions performed, he had opened the minuscule
Bouffes
Parisiens theatre. Visitors to the Exhibition flocked to hear his
tuneful operettas satirising contemporary politics and society manners. As
one successful work followed another Rossini dubbed Offenbach "The
Mozart of the Champs Elysées". This frivolous time in France finished
abruptly with the Franco-Prussian War and the siege of Paris in 1870-71 and
with it the fall of Napoleon III and the demise of the Second Empire.
Offenbach, with his Germanic guttural French felt his day in France was over
and he went to America still harbouring a wish to write a true opera that
would be accepted and performed at the Paris Opéra Comique.
On Offenbach’s return to Paris, another composer generously ceded
Offenbach the
Hoffmann libretto. He set to work on the plot. It
tells the story of Hoffmann’s loves and his nemesis, Dr Lindorf, who assumes
the disguises of Coppelius, Dapertutto and Dr Miracle to thwart Hoffmann’s
pursuit of the ladies of the story. Hoffmann in his turn is rescued from the
machinations, and worst intentions, of Dr Lindorf by his companion
Nicklausse, a trousers role. As financial necessity involved Offenbach
producing other work during the period of composition, progress was slow and
aggravated by the composer’s declining health. At his death he had only
orchestrated the Prologue and Act I. The remainder of the work was in piano
score and was orchestrated by Ernest Guiraud; he who set the dialogue of
Carmen as sung recitative. The work was presented at the
Opéra
Comique on 10 February 1881 and ran for over one hundred performances
in that first season. However, the convoluted story does not end there.
Others added spoken dialogue, altered the sequence of the acts, and their
location, as well as setting sung recitatives to replace the spoken
dialogue. Many performances have been based on the traditional Choudens
edition with sung recitative with others using the Oeser critical edition
which involved a change in the sequence of the acts. The present recording
is based on the research of Michael Kaye and Jean-Christophe Keck with
important amendments and cuts by dramaturg Agathe Mélinand. I gather,
without the benefit of a score, or copies of the scholarship, or of any
booklet information or track-listing, that this involves the omission of
Giulietta’s seduction aria,
L’amour, lui dit la belle, vos yeux était
fermées. On the plus side we are able to hear most of Offenbach’s
original final scene.
Given the failure to provide any basic written information, I provide the
following summary and sequence of the acts:-
Prologue, DVD 1. CHs. 3-8.
Act 1. Olympia Act. DVD 1. CHs. 9-15
Act 2. Antonia act. DVD 2. CHs. 1-9
Act 3. Giulietta act. DVD 2. CHs. 10-14
Epilogue. DVD 2 CHs.15-18
Pelly’s staging is unorthodox, rather colourless and mechanical, involving
the movement of large flats, staircases and doorways. It is a pity, in my
view, that Pelly chooses to show how Antonia is manipulated in her seeming
flying moments rather than leaving us to wonder. After all the work is not
meant to be realistic but more the drunken Hoffmann’s dreams in his stupor.
Likewise the emergence of his muse, Nicklausse, as a woman in the epilogue
is perverse (CH.18). The filming not merely lacks colour, but varies from
excessive close-ups to showing largely irrelevant details.
As to the singing, this was billed as being Natalie Dessay’s departure
from the operatic stage, singing all three roles of Olympia, Antonia and
Giulietta. As it was she sang only Antonia. Given her vocal state,
exemplified by a thin-sounding and not wholly steady introductory aria to
act two, this was a wise decision. As ever her characterisation, clarity of
diction and acting was wholly committed and she received rapturous applause
from the audience. Her husband, Laurent Naouri, taking the roles of
Hoffmann’s four nemeses. was masterful in his acted portrayal. Vocally not
quite ideally sonorous, he was also guilty of some minor unsteadiness. The
best singing of the principals came from Kathleen Kim as Olympia, fearless
in her singing of the high notes and wholly convincing in her acted
interpretation of a mechanical doll. As the third of Hoffmann’s ill-chosen
loves, Tatiana Pavlovskaya was variable and not wholly at home in the French
language. Francophone Michèle Losier had no problem with the language or
style and his acted portrayal and singing was a notable strength of the
production. Michael Spyres, who I associate more with Rossini than
francophone opera, sings well, albeit showing some sign of tiredness at the
end. Nothing wrong either with his French style or linguistic inflection,
illustrated in his singing of Kleinsach (DVD1 CH.6). Along with the style,
he manages the vocal demands and creates a believable character. The minor
roles are well sung and acted in their different ways whilst on the rostrum
Stéphane Denève is wholly in sympathy with the idiom. His pacing of the well
known Barcarolle at the start of act three (CH.10) is masterful. What he
made of the staging is nobody’s guess, or maybe his hair got in the way of
his seeing too much of it.
Robert J Farr
