Der Musensohn
Our own Gualtier told tales and named names, in great detail, after Monday’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann dress rehearsal. Squirrel was at the premiere, and had a grand old time.
Bartlett Sher’s production lovingly displays the many dimensions of Offenbach’s inspired and charming opera. With perfect comedic timing, clarity of action, and real depth of feeling, even its few cheap moments seemed top-shelf.
Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja, who pulled out of the dress during Act One due to a cold, astounded last night’s audience as Hoffmann, betraying no signs of infirmity. The role is fatiguing and high, and somewhat unusual in the repertoire, having been sung through the years by a wide variety of very different tenors. Calleja brings a unique vocal color to the part, in addition to a rather serious demeanor that befits Hoffmann the idealistic writer.
Calleja’s vibrato is a little tight, which is not to Squirrel’s taste, and this might give the impression of a lack of flexibility. In fact, the high tessitura, and the requisite power, seemed to come easily to him. His fault is a rather notey delivery and lack of lilting French inflection, which rendered phrases somewhat stiff. But he overcame this limitation in his Act Three duet with Giulietta (”O Dieu! de quelle ivresse!”), letting himself go and singing with passionate, arching contour.
La Netrebko was rapturous as Antonia, bathing us in her sweet sound, and showing both detail and presence in all parts of her range. Her little mad scene at the end of the act might have been a tad kitschy, but we were too buzzed on the lovely voice filling the hall to care. Kate Lindsey, a tremendously talented high mezzo with a light, flexible upper register, sang the androgynous Tinkerbelle role of Nicklausse (Muse) with sensitive delivery and sinewy lyricism. Her sound doesn’t fill the Met, but she easily makes up for it in stage acumen.
Kathleen Kim nailed the coloratura role of Olympia, not to mention the doll shtick, all of which is quite funny and kept the audience giddy with delight. So too British character tenor Alan Oke, who Squirrel thought deserved a far more rousing curtain call than he got for his charming and spot-on comic relief, particularly as Cochenille and Frantz. Ekaterina Gubanova had a nice sound and a stately presence, and Alan Held held his own as four villains, all variants of Buffo-Mephisto.
James Levine, recovering from back surgery and returning to the podium for the first time since the season premiere Tosca, seemed in excellent form, drawing stylish and mostly precise playing and a delicate, rounded sound from the great Met Orchestra. In several choral scenes he roused them to chilling crescendos that ruffled the Met’s red velvet. He received a warm welcome from the audience before each act. The convalescent only appeared slightly stiff when taking his onstage bows at the conclusion of the evening.
Barlett Sher’s production is an act of good faith between director and audience. Orchestral preludes played to a closed curtain (the actual gold Met curtain!), no cast members running around on a catwalk, etc. It sets modest, clear goals while respecting the traditional expectations of opera. It exceeds these goals, and he demonstrates his tremendous talent by serving the work’s inherent generosity and charm first.
Acts One and Three resembled one another, and were the more successful, conveying a vague Moulin Rouge what-the-french-call gauloiserie without forcing the issue, and largely avoiding cliches of scenic design or blocking. Act Two is oddly minimal, with large scrims and a blank stage floor that was suspiciously reminiscent of Robert Carson’s Onegin. Here Sher’s handling of the principals, and the quality lighting work by James Ingalls, helped keep the focus on the singing.
Sher goes to obvious pains to clearly delineate principals from chorus, and in spite of the crowd on stage, the larger scenes never seemed cramped nor needlessly busy. His “concept” of couching Hoffmann in some vague Kafkaesque biographical frame takes a back seat, rightfully, to the work’s romantic and comedic elements. Time-traveling fantastically through Hoffmann’s mind, Sher takes no unreasonable liberties with the plot even as he tests our boundaries of belief. The result are as festive as the Feuerzangenbowle gulped by Hoffmann’s revelers in the Epilogue.
The biggest curtain calls of the evening were for Mr. Calleja, who drew thunderous showers of affection from the crowd, and Ms. Kim, who almost literally brought the show to a stop following her Act One aria.
Hot on the heels of their From the House of the Dead, this production is another resounding bravo for Peter Gelb, and the start of a buoyant winning streak for the Met.
Go see!
I heard the first half on the MET player, and from there, Calleja sounded fine for the role, but he did seem a little “huskey” with cold, and I also thought the hoarseness might account for what seemed like a surprizingly big size. I do hate caprino-laden tenors, but I find Calleja’s bit of caprino more of a distinction, adding to the variety of voices in the world.
I agree with another poster, that when you split up the heroines among different singers, you should have an Olympia with spot-on coloratura, and there was a lot of audible missing over the broadcast. This is the singer who needs to settle into the role.
The Nicklausse I didn’t care for – she sounded the way too many house singers do: heavy and a bit matronly, and not right for Nicklausse. On broadcast, I rather have a matronly-looking Nicklausse than a matronly-sounding one
In retrospect, Held’s villains didn’t make much of an impression – I may have been expecting something more diabolically bass-like…
Oke, the Orchestra, and the Chorus all sounded great.
(And I do love Contes d’Hoffmann, with all its quirks, in both the watered-down Choudens version, and the “new” dark comedy version.)
Bravo to Bartlett Sher and the production team for an innovative staging that was faithful to the story. It’s so rare to find a creative team who actually attempts to serve and more fully flesh out the intentions of the creators–most would rather impose a high-concept conceit that undermines the action and frustrates the audience. Also, I’d like to take bets on how long before they start selling “Hoffmann eyeball umbrellas” in the Met Opera Shop.
JJ’s review of Hoffman is, in my opinion, dead on with what I saw at the dress rehearsal. I can’t comment on Calleja because I have not heard him in the full role, but given how much the rest of JJ’s opinion make sense to me, i will trust him on that one.
Who is indeed making the artistic decisions?
Or as I put it after the dress: “this time the blame can be assigned to none other than [Gelb] himself: it’s time to rethink the directors and the singers he hires.”
JJ’s review of Hoffman is, in my opinion, dead on with what I saw at the dress rehearsal. I can’t comment on Calleja because I have not heard him in the full role, but given how much the rest of JJ’s opinion make sense to me, i will trust him on that one.
Who is indeed making the artistic decisions?
Or as I put it after the dress: ” it’s time to rethink the directors and the singers Gelb hires.”
Has JJ’s review been posted?
Voila.
Didn’t he have to rethink the singers he hired for Hoffmann? Several times? Just asking…
On my Sirius, with surround sound, Calleja’s singing was excellent, with a timbre of the 40-50s, somewhere between Bjorling and Tagliavini. He is in his early 30s and very promising. As for Netrebko slowing down, I doubt it unless she’s planning to have another baby.
Ms Peters sings nice French too. Shame, of course, that she is so fat and ugly, like all singers were before 2005 or so.
Thanks, Gualtier.
I was in the house and Calleja made it through, generally by the skin of his teeth.
He seemed to be pushing for volume in the prologue and Act 1, particularly in Kleinzach, and this cost him. He omitted the high B in the Olympia act and all the other acuti were tight and small. He began having tuning problems in act 2 and all of the challenging phrases in act 3 were beyond him. He phonated the pitches but it was not good singing. (O Dieu de quelle ivresse, Giulietta duet, and Septet) The upper register becomes nearly straight-tone and very small, and in all of these difficult passages he very obviously rushed, leaving Levine to try and make something of it.
So, in short he hit all the notes but the strenuous passages were very strained. I will give him a mulligan and hear it again, since they are saying he has been ill (didn’t sound ill yesterday or in the dress rehearsal), but I have to admit again that I just don’t like his voice, technically speaking. If he would fix the bleat he might have a very nice leggiero to lyric tenor for a house the size of the Met, but at this point his career perplexes me. It seems largely due to some perceived prestige attached to his Decca recording contract, which is also a mystery to me. He should be very thankful every day that someone along the line decided to make him a star, because his performance doesn’t warrant the kind of career he has had.
Oh, and the French diction was atrocious. At the bare minimum you have to learn how to pronounce every vowel correctly if you’re going to sing freaking Hoffmann at the Met, you can’t make dozens of mistakes.