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Flights of fancy

Michael Tanner

Wednesday, 3rd December 2008

Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Royal Opera

Der fliegende Holländer
Barbican

Astonished delight was the first reaction, of everyone, I think, at the Royal Opera’s latest revival of John Schlesinger’s production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann: astonishment that Rolando Villazón seems not only to have overcome his vocal and possibly other crises, but to be, in all respects, in finer fettle than ever before. He acted with a nonchalant spontaneity, walking casually and unharmed backwards off tables when drunk, tireless in his surmounting of William Dudley’s copious, cluttery sets, and using every limb to express his hopeless ardours, while maintaining a glorious stream of tone which — it is no disrespect to Villazón Mark I — might have been that of a thrilling new tenor we had never heard before. The role of Hoffmann, whose capacity to fall in love with the wrong woman is extraordinary even by operatic standards, might have been written for him. Villazón is happiest in overdrive, and since each act of this ramshackle work requires Hoffmann to fall in love with and be utterly disillusioned by a fresh passion, all within the space of less than an hour apiece, that is just what is needed: ardour and despair. It would be interesting to see if Villazón were versatile enough to be happy or funny.

Thanks to him, what almost inevitably seems a long and not entirely purposeful evening still seemed long, but worth it. Not that there was any weak link in the casting, and the general level of musical preparation, as usual with Antonio Pappano, was high. I wish some of the orchestral playing had been subtler, and in particular that the Barcarolle, which seems to partly reveal, partly conceal, depths of pain otherwise alien to Offenbach, had been less foursquare. Hoffmann’s ill-chosen loves were all good, though only Christine Rice, a plausibly Rubenesque courtesan, was as vocally outstanding as Villazón. I find it hard to bear singing dolls, but Olympia was despatched with the necessary mechanical accuracy by Ekaterina Lekhina. What does one do about Antonia? That part of the score is so weak that no one ever seems quite right in it. Katie van Kooten’s voice, though pretty, is intrinsically not expressive. Gidon Saks, a tremendous performer, and one whose commitment to whatever he is singing is total, made the Four Villains separately interesting. And Kristine Jepson was an adorable Nicklausse. It’s hard to envisage a much stronger case being made for Hoffmann than this, and good to see that BBC Radio 3 will be broadcasting it in May, but why not before?

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