Unlucky in Love
GIUSEPPE PENNISI visits Pisa for
The Tales of Hoffmann
The Tales of Hoffmann
In Jacques Offenbach's Les
contes d'Hoffmann, the protagonist (a poet and a would-be womanizer, but
with very little luck) tells his life and unlucky love stories to a group of drinking
buddies while awaiting his latest would-be conquest, an opera singer, Stella, who is performing in Mozart's Don Giovanni. The
stories he tells are more bitter than sweet; in each act, he courts
unsuccessfully a different woman. When Don Giovanni is
over and Stella arrives, the poor fellow is totally drunk. Of
course, she goes out to dinner (and what not) with some other chap. Some time
ago, I reviewed the joint production of the English National Opera and the Munich National Theater [Innovative
Dramaturgy, 6 August 2012]. Now, a new production has
just started to tour Italy. It is a joint venture
between small provincial theatres (in Pisa, Livorno, Lucca and
Novara), all performed in very attractive buildings
with an important traditional past when
Italy was divided into a series of independent States. They receive very
limited central government support and
some assistance from the local authorities as well as from
local sponsors. They have to make do on shoe string budgets. Thus, it was daring
to stage an opera as complex as Les contes d'Hoffmann.
I saw it on 8 February 2014 at its debut in Pisa's Teatro Verdi.
 Claudia Sasso as Olympia and the chorus in Offenbach's 'The Tales of Hoffmann' in Pisa. Photo © 2014 M D'Amato. Click on the image for higher resolution |
Richard Jones is the
mastermind of the London and Munich production. Jones
shuns librettist Jules
Barbier's stage indications and locates the piece within an interior world. The opera's three tales are
played out in variants of Hoffmann's own study, re-imagined each time to
suggest his creative mind at work within its own environment. Up until the
opera's close (when Stella, his true love, finds him sprawled under his desk in
a stupor) nothing we see is real — not even the swarm of students who crawl out of the woodwork
during the Prologue, nor indeed the evil Lindorf, here a figure
conjured by the Muse herself as a somewhat neutered emblem of darkness. Jones
and his designer, Giles Cadle, carry off this reinvention brilliantly, and with
the storylines rendered intact there is little here to irritate even the most
literally-minded of spectators. In Jones' staging, Hoffmann is not the usual
garrulous taproom raconteur, but a depressive alcoholic at a artistic standstill.
 A scene from Act III of Offenbach's 'The Tales of Hoffmann' in Pisa. Photo © 2014 M D'Amato. Click on the image for higher resolution |
In Pisa, on a budget of 85,000 euros per performance (including sets, costumes and payments to soloists, orchestra, chorus and artistic staff — ie director, conductor, costumes and set designer
and lighting specialist), the whole
production is entrusted to young people with the exception of the
conductor, Guy Condette. The dramaturgy is in the
hands of a team in their mid-thirties (Nicola Zorzi, stage direction; Mauro
Tinti, sets; Elena Cicorella costumes; Michele Della Mea, lighting). The action is moved to the beginning of the twentieth century, the time
of silent cinema; the second act is in a movie theatre where a silent film is being shown and Antonia
plays the piano (and sings) to accompany it.
There is a basic single set and only a few props make the action move from
Nuremberg to Munich and then on to Venice and back to Nuremberg.
Hoffmann is not a depressive alcoholic but a happy would-be-womanizer, but his
attempts to conquest ladies fail all the time. The singers are young, good looking and
act very well. Hoffmann is a handsome twenty-eight-year-old Brazilian (Max Jota), his challenger (either
in conquering women or in preventing the
protagonist to reach is love goals) is twenty-three-year-old baritone Federico Cavarzan in the four
roles of Lindorf, Coppelius, Doctor Miracle and Dappertutto. The main women
(Madina Serebryakova Karbeli, Claudia Sasso, Valentina Boi and Marta Leung
Kwing Chung) are an international group in
their twenties and early thirties. Both the orchestra
and the chorus are cooperative ventures of young musicians and singers. Selections were
made in June 2013 after auditions. Then, four training sessions — a week each --
were held in Lucca, Novara, Livorno and Pisa, before starting rehearsal.
 Anna Consolora as Giulietta and Max Jota in the title role of Offenbach's 'The Tales of Hoffmann' in Pisa. Photo © 2014 M D'Amato. Click on the image for higher resolution |
The overall result is quite good. The production picks up on the
sweet-and-sour flavor of Les contes d'Hoffmann. The action is as fast as
in the silent films. Acting is excellent. Singing of good standard and will, no doubt, improve
as the staging travels from theatre to theatre.
In Pisa the audience was enthralled. It is good to
see so many young people devote their lives to music.
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