From first to last

As the dreaded season of goodwill approaches, the Royal Opera has mounted two revivals of pieces that are interestingly contrasted: Puccini, in the first characteristic and successful opera of his career, though with a lot still to learn, and Offenbach, with the incomplete last work of his career, but a radical departure from all the successes he had had before, and a work that is ultimately a noble flop.

Les Contes d’Hoffmann is one of the Royal Opera’s most venerable productions, dating from 1980 and having its eighth revival, with William Dudley’s elaborate sets. One might even call them cluttered, and their major disadvantage is that they necessitate not only two lengthy intervals but also several long and dramatically tiresome pauses just when you hope that the evening is going to develop a little momentum. Hoffmann is one of those pieces that has too much good music in it to let it sink, but also longueurs of stunning dullness. I look back to those happy days of highlights on LPs. As it is, the evening was only a few minutes under four hours, and you need to have an interesting central figure to rivet the attention for that long.

Hoffmann is a miserable creature, a commonplace creation who simply has bad taste in women — a mechanical doll, a Venetian whore, a terminally ill maiden. We were fortunate in that Vittorio Grigolo brought as much colour and vigour to the role as possible, his wonderful freely projected voice growing in size and intensity as the evening progressed. He has become one of the most appealing tenors of our time, and he is reliable too. He had a choice set of non-lovers, but his muse/companion Nicklausse, sung by Kate Lindsey, outshone them all and was the female star of the evening, though Christine Rice, as Giulietta, the Venetian, was marvellous in her far too small role.