Tales of Hoffmann,
Opera Australia,
Sydney Opera House
OFFENBACH's Tales of Hoffmann is early German Romanticism reflected through late French decadence: a picture of someone taking themselves too seriously by someone who never took anything seriously enough. As Offenbach scholar (and Opera Australia chorus member) Robert Mitchell points out in a program essay, the ill-fated 19th century writer, Hoffmann, represents the spirit of art-for-art's-sake.
Offenbach, on the other hand, represents artifice for artifice's sake and hints that the difference isn't all that great. This energised production nods to both fantasy and opulence but is dominated by arresting cool modernism.
At times this lends an edge to both while elsewhere, the monumentality of Roger Kirk's set - the revolving stage, the imposing diagonal slabs and the cantilevered mirrors (perhaps it is time Opera Australia productions swore off mirrors for a while) - seemed pointless, though in Offenbach, the point is to make everything pointless.
Jules Barbier's libretto adapts three of Hoffmann's stories into a futile Faustian search by Hoffmann as he seeks love from an automaton, a courtesan, and an ailing singer before reconciling himself to poetry and drink. Emma Matthews (pictured) is triumphant in the three heroine - or antiheroine - roles.
She created a parody of her own technical accomplishments as the mechanical Olympia in the Doll Song, soared magnificently as the courtesan Giulietta in the septet of Act II, but was most impressive as Antonia where she sang with the sweeping expressive depth that grows more and more in her singing. She introduces colour and warmth to a phrase and sustains and varies it to give the melody buoyancy and life.
As Hoffmann, Rosario La Spina tamed his stentorian tenor voice to grapple with the sophisticated needs of melodic shape, achieving new-found lyricism in the duets with Antonia in Act III and in the final trio.
John Wegner with widow's peak and vocal incisiveness was demonically forceful in the three Mephist-ophelian roles. It is not that the Devil gets the best tunes but Wegner gives him the most interesting persona.
Pamela Helen Stephen, as the trusted companion, Nicklausse, has the refinement and melodic instincts for the style, retaining stamina to open out wonderfully in the third act.
True to the Paris comic tradition, the work is interspliced with spoken dialogue in which John Pringle, as the inventor, Spalanzani, and the father Crespel, was the most convincing.
The chorus work was vividly impressive, particularly in the surround sound at the end, though not always co-ordinated with the pit.
