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Offenbach, Les Contes d'Hoffmann:  co-production Teatro Real de Madrid et al, producer Nicholas Joël.  Soloists, chorus and orchestra of Teatro Regio Torino, conductor Emmanuel Villaume.  Torino, Italy. 4. 2.2009.  (MM)


Puzzling, the choice of London's defunct Cyrstal Palace (1851-1936) as the backdrop on which all of the action of Torino's Les Contes d'Hoffmann took place, as was indeed puzzling the show curtain that was a copy of poster for a side-show - a snake covered woman suggesting, in English, that we see the incredible snake lady and a gargantuan gorilla too.

Perhaps explicable since the august Teatro Regio has not had a lot of experience with the complications of Offenbach's masterpiece, the last Torino Hoffmann some thirty-five years ago.  Presumably this previous Hoffmann occurred in 1973, the first season of the controversial, then new Teatro Regio (the previous one having burned down in 1936), whose architect, one Carlo Mollino, had obviously never been to an opera.

If stage director Nicolas Joël and his designer Ezio Frigerio did seem to be off-track in their solutions, at least the Teatro Regio was mostly right-on with its singers and, particularly, with its conductor, Emmanuel Villaume.  After all, as we were told by the charming young guide who showed us the theater that afternoon, opera is only music, i.e. singing.  Suspicions were that it was going to be just that anyway.

Poor Hoffman was left lying on the forestage in front of the show curtain during the five-minute transition from Luther's tavern to Spalazini's workshop (a window panel of the Crystal Palace was replaced by a full-size choo-choo train locamotive).  Young Mexican tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz was singing his first Hoffman in these Torino performances.  He is in the Carreras mold, the force of his sound heaved from his body rather than floated from his head.  His voice never faltered through these five demanding scenes, his final prayer to the muse offered vocally rather than dramatically.  This young tenor made his debut only in 2006, and to date has been heard primarily on important American stages.  While he boasts considerable youthful vocal splendor he still offers only the promise of a real Hoffmann -- we need to wait until he has lived long enough to survive a few brutal love affairs of his own.

There were some tense moments as Olympia spun around the stage on a remote controlled platform, and these movements contributed to this heroine taking the prize for the best performance of the three sopranos Torino used for this production.  Had Italian soprano Désirée Rancatore been left on her own she might have done as all the others did, simply stand downstage to deliver her role.  As it was she ably delivered the vocal fireworks of her stand-alone showpiece while whirling around the stage, marred only by some shattering of tone in her above-the-staff coloratura.

In the Antonia act the choo-choo train was replaced by a pipe organ, the purpose of which, we learned, was to hide Antonia's mother from view.  Center stage there were three instruments of a vaudeville orchestra.  Young soprano Raffaella Angeletti gave us a fine, light voiced Antonia, even her slim figure could perhaps have been thought of as consumptive.  She pulled out all her considerable stops for the big trio, though she had to compete with the vaudeville orchestra that came alive as performing skeletons.

Not to mention the mechanical gondoliers that propelled a couple of gondolas into the Crystal Palace for the Venice episode (at least there was a lot of dark blue light).   Giulietta was sung by soprano (the program calls her a mezzo), Monica Bacelli, who flounced about the stage as if she were a naive Carmen or a silly Donna Elvira rather than a femme fatale, though she delivered her scene with vocal finesse, giving considerable pleasure as the voice of Giulietta.

The only disappointment was basso Alfonso Antoniozzi who failed to cut the sizeable figures required by Offenbach's four villains, nor did he bring these flashy roles alive vocally, perhaps due to a flu that had forced him to cancel the first two performances.

Nicklausse was a victim of her costume (though all the other costuming seemed reasonable).  She appeared first as a Salvation Army rescuer, in something like a brass button uniform with an apron, and a small keg hanging over her shoulder.  For the three episodes she became a man dressed in tails, but reappeared at the end again as the Salvation Army nurse turned muse.  Nino Surguladze (a Georgian, thus the possible gender confusion) made this role very present, providing a mezzo soprano vocal force that was formidable, and bringing unusual physical liveliness to Nicklausse.  She was not able to muster the stature that the muse needs to end the opera effectively.

The Nicolas Joël production was evidently about mechanical things, the 1851 Crystal Palace a symbol of the mechanical technologies that were central to an industrial revolution.  With this idea pounded into our heads throughout the evening the fast tempos and the lightness imposed by French conductor Emmanuel Villaume seemed at first vapid and mechanical.   Mr. Joël's stage tricks had served only to trivialize these three tales, thus the purely musical values emerging from the pit, values that strove to balance the overwrought emotions of the libretto with the Offenbach muse, were overwhelmed.

It became apparent finally that maestro Villaume was walking the line between operatic parody and real opera, and between operetta and opera, a line that this maestro apparently finds to be very fine in Offenbach's masterpiece.  The tempos and lightness did indeed make bona fide Offenbach music, if not the musically indulgent Hoffmann that we self-indulgently crave.

Nicolas Joel is said to have been ill, and unable to come to Torino to stage the singers, this task taken on by Stephane Roche.  In short, Mr. Roche lined the singers up across the stage, and made a semi-circle of the chorus behind them.  The appearance of Stella in the final scene was the epitome of directorial ineptitude.

The program booklet did not credit the edition used, though presumably it was the 2003 Keck version, complete with the twenty-six pages of recently discovered manuscript for which Mr. Keck is said to have paid 160,000 euros to the French government.

Michael Milenski

Pictures ©  Teatro Regio Torino

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