Janáček - Věc Makropulos (Geneva, 2020)

Leoš Janáček - Věc Makropulos

Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2020

Tomáš Netopil, Kornél Mundruczó, Rachel Harnisch, Aleš Briscein, Sam Furness, Anna Schaumlöffel, Michael Kraus, Julien Henric, Karoly Szemeredy, Ludovit Ludha, Rodrigo Garcia, Iulia Surdu

GTG Digital - 20 October 2020

The subject of Janáček's Věc Makropulos is definitely not a traditional one; it's a science fiction story derived from a play by Karel Čapek about a woman who has been blessed/cursed with the secret of eternal life. Science fiction and the fantastical are probably more common than you think in opera and long before the 20th century, not just in such overtly classic SF themes as Haydn's Il Mondo Della Luna, but you could even include the magical fantasy elements of such works as The Magic Flute, and Handel's Orlando and Alcina. As with literature however it's the human element that is essential, the SF or fantasy genre presenting a new prism through which to explore the limits of what makes us human. That, aligned with Janáček's modernist approach to opera offers many possibilities for The Makropulos Affair.

The most obvious theme and clearly one of the principal questions that the story explores is the human relationship to time. In a way this aligns the opera with similar themes in The Cunning Little Vixen; the need to accept the span of a lifetime as being wondrous in itself, but there comes a time when life needs to be renewed, the old making way for the new. It's not unreasonable then, particularly considering Emilia Marty's profession as an opera singer who has lived down through the ages, her origins coinciding with the birth of opera, to see that idea applied to opera itself and the need for the artform to reinvent itself in order for it to have continued relevance and meaning.

In that respect Janáček's Věc Makropulos, created in 1926, is very much a twentieth century opera, the composer also striking out for new musical ground. Here he expands on the psychological music drama of Káťa Kabanová and would take it even further in his final work From the House of the Dead, leaving behind the folk influence and conventions of his earlier works - as fresh and original as his approach to them was - and take opera in a new direction, pushing the idea of singing to follow vocal patterns, rather then vocals following musical rhythms. And yet time and timing is also a factor in Věc Makropulos, compressing a complex story with diverse characters and the relationships between them into a relatively short opera, the music measuring out its own idea of time.

If the Hungarian film director Kornél Mundruczó considers the idea of the work being representative of opera through the years, it's in pretty bad shape by the time Emilia Marty makes her appearance in this Grand Théâtre de Genève production recorded between Covid lockdowns in October 2020, with pre-recorded orchestra and chorus for social distancing reasons. She may impress young admirer Krista with her singing voice, dazzle Albert Gregor with her beauty and drive Janek Prus to distraction and suicide, but this Emilia Marty is noticeably rough around the edges, close to being on her last legs. As she removes layers of clothing, sores, stitches, weeping wounds and bandages are visible, all trying to hold her together, By the time we get to the second Act, she's connected up to an intravenous drip.

That idea of stagnating life (or opera) has been explored in other productions (Robert Carsen's Venice production made more of the theatricality aspect), but Mundruczó chooses to approach the idea of Emilia Marty or Elina Makropulos in a more open and modern context. Choosing androgyny rather than the usual beautiful femme fatale or opera diva, EM here can be seen in Janáček's opera and Čapek's story as the prototype of the enigmatic modern day rock star, like Bowie or Tida Swinton's Marianne Lane in Luca Guadagino's film A Bigger Splash. Her own personality is submerged behind identities and reinventions of herself to such an extent that she loses sense of her true identity and becomes a hollow shell of a person.

Whatever way you want to look at Emilia Marty or Elina Makropulos - whether diva or rock star or movie idol - she is an ideal that can never live up to the reality, as Janek's father Prus finds out when he sleeps with her. She is in fact the personification of everybody's dream and ideal, a cipher that everyone uses as an object onto which they project their own dreams, ideals and insecurities. You can also read into that the fate of the objectification of women, EM doing what she needs to do to get by through the ages, to survive at the hands of men and their laws. For Emilia, that's borne out here also in the struggle she has to get around the ideas of inheritance that favour first-born sons, but it soon becomes clear that she has suffered in other ways through the ages.

While Mundruczó doesn't over-emphasise these themes, he allows them to become more evident by removing the second act from its theatrical setting. Act II takes place in Marty's own apartment, one carefully designed to reflect her true personality, inspired by the modernist design of Hungarian-American architect Marcel Breuer. And what consequently comes out in this production is the strength it takes to face up to who you are. By accepting the reality instead of living the dream. Life only has meaning when it is finite. True immortality, or at least a version of it, is offered to Krista, as a singer, but she refuses take the easy option. It - personality, identity - has to be earned.

As likewise does gaining an understanding of what makes EM tick. Janáček's music goes some way to exploring the unusual psychology of Marty, who turns out to be a surprisingly modern phenomenon. Initially fragile and weak, holding no consistent musical theme or melody but just jagged pieces that do not hold comfortably together, her vocal lines strengthen towards the later part of the work, soaring to a conclusion of release or recognition. Mundruczó follows those rhythms, divesting Marty of her clothing and layers of identity until she re-enters time - the furniture and objects of the room floating in space at the moment of revelation - as she becomes truly human.

The singing performances are good, although there's a little uncertainty at first that Rachel Harnisch could carry off the role of Emilia Marty with the necessary charisma, as she is not made up to look like an ageless, timeless beauty. It's a deceptive impression - one that Janáček indeed writes as such - as she powers through to the conclusion in a state of undress. There are no concerns about Aleš Briscein, soaring and lyrical as Albert. All the performances are impressive, which is quite an achievement because Makropulos is a hugely demanding opera on performers, on musicians and on the audience. Without any intervals, the opera is still challenging and it demands total concentration to follow the implications of the court drama and psycho-drama. The rewards however are great, and with Tomáš Netopil conducting, this production holds you rapt and does lead you to consider the circumstances of the characters, and feel the weight of the challenges time and life present to them.

Links: Grand Théâtre de Genève

Mozart - Così Fan Tutte (Belfast, 2017)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Così Fan Tutte

NI Opera, Belfast - 2017

Nicholas Chalmers, Adele Thomas, Kiandra Howarth, Heather Lowe, Samuel Dale Johnson, Sam Furness, Aoife Miskelly, John Molloy

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 17 November 2017

Opera in Ireland is going through a period of change at the moment with a new national opera company being formed in the south of the country and a new director taking over the running of opera in the north. Considering how successful Northern Ireland Opera has been over the last few years, there would undoubtedly be some interest to see how Walter Sutcliffe would follow, taking over from Oliver Mears. I don't think there would have been any concerns about a high standard being maintained, but it remained to be seen whether there would be any change in repertoire and style. I'd say that things have got off to a very good start with Così Fan Tutte.

It's been a while since I've seen anyone approach Così Fan Tutte as a pure comedy. With Mozart's third collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte is often regarded as being a lesser work than The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, perhaps because it is a little more overtly frivolous. In order to give it the true stature that many think it undoubtedly deserves and address the genuine social commentary that is hidden behind the gender comedy, directors like Michael Haneke and Christophe Honoré have tended to work extra hard to try and give the opera a little more of contemporary edginess that is worth exploring, but perhaps doesn't really match the true spirit of the work.

It was refreshing then to see that this first new production with Walter Sutcliffe in charge of NI Opera didn't set out to make a statement, or if there is a statement to this Così Fan Tutte it's that the intention is to be true to the spirit of the works rather than impose any kind of inappropriate modern revisionism upon them. That doesn't mean either that there can't be a refreshing and original approach taken to the work, and one interesting development is that this Così Fan Tutte opera is directed by Adele Thomas, who - judging from her biography in the programme - is a theatre director with no previous experience of opera.

Whatever her background, there's no question that Thomas's setting of Così Fan Tutte in the era of the Hollywood silent movies of the 1920s is completely in the spirit of the work. Or it is for the first half of the opera anyway; the second half perhaps needed a little more. For the first half of this production however there was a permanent grin on my face all the way through to the interval. Conducted by Nicholas Chalmers with attention to mood and played with spirit and a lightness of touch by the Ulster Orchestra, this was joyous, glorious Mozart at his most playful, buoyant and brilliant.

Trying to give some credibility to the rather innocent couples of Così Fan Tutte can be difficult, unless one does indeed set it in a more innocent age. The 1920s is not such an innocent age as an idealised one, where the excess and indulgence of an America that hadn't fully experienced the horrors of the Great War in Europe and had yet to suffer the impact of the Wall Street Crash at the end of the decade. For many, particularly in Hollywood, this life was an endless party and not to be taken too seriously. And it's delightfully depicted that way in this production, with a few bottles of champagne always ready to hand and a conga line of revellers with balloons and streamers weaving through the proceedings at regular intervals.

For the first half of the opera at least, this captures the spirit that Mozart weaves through Così Fan Tutte perfectly, and you could even say that it anticipates the darker side of the opera in the second half when the party inevitably comes to an end and the characters have to pick up the pieces. Heedless of the consequences, they belatedly discover that there is a price to be paid when the fun comes to an end, and that life can also involve deception, betrayal and disappointment. In Hollywood, the reality would also hit home with scandals, affairs and alcoholism destroying the promising careers of many of the silent film actors - the lifestyle ending more careers than the advent of talkies.

Adele Thomas tries to bring out this aspect in the direction of the characters and Nicholas Chalmers certainly finds the rich sophistication of how Mozart depicts those contradictory sentiments, but the necessary tone isn't quite as well established in the second half of the production. I think the limitations of Hannah Clark's set designs don't extend as well into the second half. Wonderfully colourful and vibrant, with curtains revealing stages within stages to match the play acting of the comic drama, a little more could have been done perhaps with flickering projections or silent-movie imagery to differentiate or vary the tone in the latter part of the show.

Thomas however clearly worked hard with the singers to bring real personality to each of the characters, and it's a measure of the individual performances that each one of them made a good impression. The most confident performances were from the most experienced members of the cast; John Molloy and Aoife Miskelly. Molloy was an outstanding Don Alfonso, neither calculating nor manipulative, but one rather who wanted to enlighten the younger innocents with his experience of life. The role was comfortably within Molloy's range and he sang it unimposingly but with characteristic aplomb and with deference to character and situation. His double-act with Aoife Miskelly's similarly unshowy, comically nuanced and delicately expressive Despina was a joy to watch.

As you would expect, there was a playful innocence to Flordiligi, Dorabella, Guglielmo and Ferrando that was well brought out in the production, and the casting of young lyrical singers is key to making that convincing. There was nothing sinister suggested in the male roles, which are played with the same kind of youthful fervour as the female roles. If there was perhaps a tendency to overact by Samuel Dale Johnson and (more so) by Sam Furness in the male roles, that could however be seen in keeping with the silent movie acting style. The girls were really deserving of the production's focus however, Kiandra Howarth impressing as Fiordiligi and Heather Lowe bringing that extra little characterisation to Dorabella with little interpolations, gasps and sighs fitted into the singing expression.

And it was in Italian! That might not be the most significant change of direction in the new NI Opera, and I'm sure other works (such as the forthcoming Threepenny Opera) will suit the previous English language singing only policy, but it's a good to have a more flexible approach and Mozart's well-known operas always work better in the original language. It also meant that the occasional 20s-era touches to the surtitles, which might have been inaudible in singing performance, took some of the sting out of Da Ponte's libretto and got plenty of laughs. The lyrical Italian singing and rapid-fire recitative (to a suitably silent-movie like fortepiano) certainly posed no problems for the cast. Or the chorus, who were in wonderful voice and an energetic presence. Hugely entertaining, this was a very promising start to a new NI Opera season.

Links: NI Opera

Mozart - Don Giovanni (NI Opera, 2016)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni

NI Opera, 2016

Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Henk Neven, John Molloy, Clive Bayley, Hye-Youn Lee, Rachel Kelly, Sam Furness, Aoife Miskelly, Christopher Cull

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 19th November 2016

So, it would appear that we are coming to the end of Oliver Mears' term as Artistic Director of NI Opera. It seemed obvious that Mears would go on to bigger and better things sooner or later and I suppose you could consider an appointment replacing Kasper Holten as Director of Opera at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden as a step in the right direction. Both Mears and conductor Nicholas Chalmers have achieved much in their time at NI Opera, raising the profile of the work done in the province in a way that has evidently made a favourable impression in the UK opera world. We've been lucky to see some great work from them over the last six of years. In the meantime, as for Don Giovanni at the Grand Opera House in Belfast - well, it's business as usual.

Business as usual however doesn't mean that there is anything at all predictable about the NI Opera production, but without having to involve any fancy concept or new interpretation, they manage to find a way to keep it fresh and modern and still get to the heart of the work. But Mears can also surprise in his choice of location settings. I've seen many productions of Don Giovanni in any number of inventive productions, but I would never have imagined it being suitable to stage on a mid-twentieth century cruise ship. On the other hand, it seems like a perfectly natural place for a romantic adventure and misadventure, to show class differences where there are servants below the decks, and where there is also a recognisable air of period decadence about it all, and isn't class and decadence what Don Giovanni is all about?

Well no, evidently it's about a lot more than that, but too often that is the aspect that is given the greatest emphasis. And it's given that emphasis because Don Giovanni is set in a world where such class distinctions are obvious and because Don Giovanni himself is such a fascinating character to explore. We know he's an inveterate womaniser, we know there's a cruel streak to his use and abuse of women (and his manservant), and we know he does indeed use his position to charm and seduce them. Any deeper exploration of his motivations however usually tends towards a darker, more callous nature, as a murderer and a rapist, and there is a good case for examining Don Giovanni by today's standards in those terms (and the opera is so great that it can bear such an approach), but you have to question whether that was really the tone that Mozart and Da Ponte were aiming for in an opera buffa.

Even though he is amusingly bunked up in cabin 666 of the cruise ship Sevilla, there's nothing really sinister or radical about Oliver Mears' interpretation of Don Giovanni for NI Opera, and it does consequently lack a bit of an edge that you might find in other interpretations. What is significant about the weight and emphasis in this production however was that it is not wholly focussed on an interpretation or exploration of the psychological mindset of Don Giovanni as much as there is a recognition that the work is essentially an ensemble piece with many other areas of interest to explore. And yes, it is essentially a comedy too, but - much like Così Fan Tutte and Le Nozze di Figaro - comedy in the hands of Mozart and Da Ponte can still have a lot of a bite to it. And, when you get right down to it, and no matter from what angle you approach the work, the message here is not one that needs to be overly laboured or complicated: in the end Don Giovanni pays for his sins and goes to hell.

It's tempting to look at some of the references in the production and consider why Don Giovanni has a blonde bouffant hair-do, but this production was developed long before there was any suggestion that Donald Trump would be a figure of such importance. Although, considering the US President-Elect's views of women and his treatment of them, if you want to apply that image to Don Giovanni, you might find it adds another level to a work that is more than capable of sustaining such ideas. It's tempting also to read something into the colonial references of Don Giovanni's fancy-dress party, where he comes dressed as a white hunter taming the savages - but again, there is no overt reference here nor expansion of the theme. It is very amusing though, and creates a colourful scene in one of Annemarie Woods' beautifully designed and eye-catching sets for the production.

What matters perhaps just as much as any psychological exploration of Don Giovanni, or attempt to apply his behaviour to a deeper evil that we recognise in our own times, is how his behaviour affects others. In that respect, the murder of Donna Anna's father the Commendatore and Don Giovanni's attempted rape or seduction of Donna Anna is clearly an important factor in bringing the Don to justice. Don Ottavio's role in the work can tend to be overlooked, but he too suffers from the consequences of what has happened between Don Giovanni and Donna Anna. Some productions have daringly suggested that Donna Anna is complicit or at least a willing and participant in Don Giovanni's seductions, before it perhaps goes too far.

Oliver Mears doesn't seem to be too concerned with such nuances or interpretations. To do so would be to again place too much attention into one area when you could as easily make the case that Donna Elvira's betrayal and her self-delusions are just as important to shining a light on the activities and nature of Don Giovanni (it is to Donna Elvira of course that Leporello reveals the list of his masters conquests across Europe). As indeed is the manner in which the servants Zerlina and Masetto, and perhaps by extension the sanctity of the institution of marriage, are treated with callous disregard by Don Giovanni. All have equal weight in Mozart and Da Ponte's great work and Oliver Mears and Nicholas Chalmers allow the music Mozart writes for each of the characters to speak for them.

They also bear in mind that the comedy is important and that Leporello is a perfect conduit between the comedy and the tragedy of Don Giovanni, that Don Giovanni gets his comeuppance in the end (an unusually wet one here rather than the usual fiery one, but no less effective or spectacular for it), and that it's by a joining of forces of his victims that this result is brought about. As such, if you are going to place the emphasis on the ensemble nature of Don Giovanni as an opera, there's only one thing that is important, and that's the singing. Which means there are eight things to get right, and - as is evident from looking at the cast list alone - it's clear that NI Opera have assembled the strongest possible team with a good mix of local, UK and international talent.

There's room to identify with the predicament of any of the characters, but for me it was Hye-Youn Lee who made the strongest case for Donna Anna's suffering. It's a technically demanding role, but Lee (who I've also seen sing Scottish Opera's Madama Butterfly) has the capability and the lyricism required for expression of these deep emotions. It helped also that there was a Don Ottavio of equal lyricism in Sam Furness, who made an often overlooked role come to life in a warm and sympathetic way. It's not quite clear how the vengeful Commendatore makes his comeback here, as his statue is packed on-board even before he is killed, but Clive Bayley's voice was enough to put the fear of god into anyone. Rachel Kelly's Donna Elvira really was also a woman on a mission (her fancy-dress costume even had something of Joan of Arc appearance to it), the singing full of character, her appearances hitting that difficult spot between the comedy of her interventions and the tragic nature of her circumstances.

The last time I saw John Molloy I thought he struggled with the demands of the Verdi bass role as Banquo in Macbeth, but he's perfectly at home in the lighter comedy bass roles. Leporello is still a challenge well above something like Doctor Dulcamara, but Molloy was superb, making it look easy, giving the role energy and fire. If the lyricism wasn't always there in the catalogue aria ('Madamina, il catalogo è questo'), it was probably more to do with it being sung in English. That was something that also hindered the more nuanced expressions of Henk Neven's Don Giovanni, but his performance nonetheless captured that tricky combination of charisma, sleaze, arrogance and authority that is needed. Last and far from least Aoife Miskelly played a light, playful and skittish Zerlina alongside Christopher Cull's insecure but devoted Masetto, both raising the level of the two servants and their humble love to a level of equal importance that is vital to the purpose of the work and this production as a whole.

If some of the singing was on the light side, Nicholas Chalmers did his best to balance the weight and measure of the orchestral playing to keep the translation audible. Lightness of touch is often better with Mozart, as much for the treatment of the drama as for the openness it gives to instrumental colour and for the lyrical character it's necessary to have in the voices. Without losing any of that character, the drama and the coming together of the piece as an ensemble takes on a momentum of its own towards that darker conclusion. Even there, the lightness of touch is consistent and telling, Don Giovanni appropriately meeting his end via an object - a hairdryer dropped by the Commendatore in his private pool - that highlights another fatal flaw in his character; his vanity.  Shocking stuff!

Links: NI Opera

Britten - The Turn of the Screw (NI Opera, 2016 - Belfast)

Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw

NI Opera, 2016

Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Katie Bird, Garbhan McEnoy, Sam Furness, Giselle Allen, Yvonne Howard, Lucia Vernon-Long

Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 11 March 2016

There are many ways to explore and interpret the themes and the suggestion laid down by Benjamin Britten in his adaptation of Henry James' sinister little tale. Even in a revival of its 2012 production, NI Opera's The Turn of the Screw can reveal other facets of this endlessly fascinating little piece with a few changes of casting and a little tweak of directorial emphasis here and there. Essentially, the tone and the ambiguity of the production remain largely the same, but the whole idea of fear dominating the direction of the drama seemed to be more pronounced in a way that opened up other possibilities.

Fear, of course, is an integral part of what The Turn of the Screw is all about; it is a ghost story after all. It's perhaps not necessary though for the audience to feel fear in the way that a traditional ghost story sets out to do. That would actually be harder to achieve, since everyone has different things that scare them and evidently not everyone believes in ghosts. One of the other problems of this approach is that ghost stories aren't quite as scary when you know what is coming, and I have to admit that I didn't find this production quite as chilling as I remember it being four years ago. Despite this, the sense of fear in the 2016 revival of the production was palpable and effective in other ways.

The Turn of the Screw is more a study of fear than it is a traditional tale to scare the reader or the listener. Fear is contagious in the way that it spreads through Bly household here, and it isn't too much of stretch to consider it a model for how fear spreads in a wider community. Henry James didn't need to overstate the psychological implications of repressed impulses of the Governess in relation to the Victorian society of his time, and the wider implications don't need to be be spelled out for a modern audience either if the telling of the tale is true. When you have ghosts in a story this could present a problem, but the key to the story lies in how convincing we find the perspective and the actions of the Governess.

In as far as it was sung and played by Katie Bird, the importance of the role of the Governess as the propagator of fear in The Turn of the Screw is wonderfully effective. Fear, or at least anxiety that will later develop into fear, is evident from her first appearance on the stage just after the narrator's prologue. Will she like her new post? Will the children be nice? Will her employer be pleased with her? These concerns develop into a kind of over-protectiveness that infects Mrs Grose and leads, arguably, to a kind of mass hallucination that manifests the fear in the form of ghosts. Or it could be that the constant watching over Flora and Miles and pushing adult concerns down on them doesn't allow the children to be children.

What could be considered to be normal healthy behaviour for children, even if they are just a little bit naughty, is viewed with suspicion by the anxious Governess. It could be that the Governess, prompted by Mrs Grose's distaste for former employees, dredges up issues related to Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, conflates them with her own complexes and twists them in the minds of the children and the Governess into something more sinister. A lot of this is just speculation, and it's very much dependent upon what one wants to read into the work, but the greatness of The Turn of the Screw is that the ambiguity it creates around such situations allows events to be interpreted in a variety of ways.

It's harder to retain that sense of ambiguity on the stage, where concrete decisions and interpretations of one sort or another have to be made, but I think Oliver Mears' production manages to do this very well. I've already covered how the direct and simple stage designs work effectively to open up and close down the drama in my review of the original 2012 production at the Theatre at the Mill in Newtownabbey, and it still works here. What was great about the revival of the production, seen this time at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, was experiencing how well the singing and the musical performances were also attuned to project this sense of 'fear' consuming everyone who comes into contact with the Governess.

Principally, a lot of that was to do with Katie Bird's interpretation of the role. This was an outstanding singing performance that projected the fears of the Governess outward. There's a balance to be found between appearing to be neurotic or all out crazy and just letting anxiety break down the Governess's grip on reality, and Katie Bird covered that gradual disintegration almost imperceptibly. The Governess isn't aware of the fear she is sowing, believing her behaviour to be reasonable, proportionate, and indeed proper, but there's an edge of hysteria that becomes more and more apparent as events spiral and ghosts appear, and that was well integrated into the performance.

What is marvellous is not only could you detect this in how Bird sang and played the role, but the acoustics of the Lyric and Nicholas Chalmers' conducting allowed you hear how well Britten also scores and ramps up the tension, tightening the screw with little musical runs on the piano and the double bass. It's far from just eerie atmospherics and is suggestive of something much more complex in its psychology. Having just won an award for his ETO Hoffmann, Sam Furness was a good fit for this production's Peter Quint, while Giselle Allen reprised her chilling Miss Jessel. It's telling however that this production and the careful direction didn't allow either of the ghostly apparitions to overshadow Bird's Governess. Garbhan McEnoy brought a brittle vulnerability to Miles, working wonderfully alongside Lucia Vernon-Long's innocently teasing Flora to keep that delicious sense of ambiguity that is exploited so well on every level by NI Opera's still effective production of this ever intriguing work.

Links: NI Opera

Offenbach - Tales of Hoffmann (ETO, 2015 - Buxton)

Jacques Offenbach - Tales of Hoffmann

English Touring Opera, 2015

Philip Sunderland, James Bonas, Sam Furness, Ilona Domnich, Warwick Fyfe, Louise Mott, Tim Dawkins, Adam Tunnicliffe, Matt R J Ward, Ashley Mercer

English Touring Opera, Buxton - 17 October 2015

The reason for the popularity of The Tales of Hoffmann is no mystery. It's a work that has some dazzling opportunities for singing, it has some of the most memorable melodies in all of opera, and not just one, but three adventures to enjoy. Personally however, despite the best efforts of Offenbach to construct a coherent narrative out of the various stories of ETA Hoffmann and impose a structure that interlinks them, I find that it's a bit of a mess of an opera that more often than not leaves me cold. Perhaps though I just haven't seen the right production.

No matter what I think, Tales of Hoffmann remains popular with opera companies and directors who relish the challenge and the fun of staging the imaginative and colourful adventures, and it remains popular with audiences. It was undoubtedly the best attended show of the current English Touring Opera programme - more popular Pelléas et Mélisande and Werther - when I caught the tour in Buxton. And indeed the ETO do make a more convincing case for the work, enlivening its humour without taking away from its darkness, highlighting the qualities of the work and mitigating against its weaknesses. I'm still not totally convinced that Les Contes de Hoffmann is a great opera, but it can at least be an entertaining one.

A large part of the problem with the opera I find is that neither Hoffmann as a character nor his stories make a whole lot of sense. They are very much of their time; an incomprehensible blend of maudlin High Romantic sentiments and bizarre situations with obscure psychological and psychosexual underpinnings. In Olympia, Hoffmann is gripped by a blind lust for automaton; in Antonia, a girl is singing herself to death; and in Giulietta, a siren lures men to their destruction, stealing their souls through a mirror. Offenbach ties all the works together well, finding commonality behind the heroines, the villains and the Hoffmann figure in them, but it still takes some effort to pull this together into a coherent and convincing whole.

Director James Bonas finds a good way to make this old-fashioned demi-monde tale of high melodrama relatable; through the movies. He imagines Hoffmann not as a writer, but as a film screenwriter of silent movies in an age where the talkies threaten to bring an edge of unwelcome reality to his imaginative fantasies. His heavy drinking and unrequited love for his leading lady, Stella, leads him to blur the lines between his reality and that of his imagination; Olympia becoming a Frankenstein-like creation; Antonia the victim of a vampire in a Dracula movie; Giulietta seen in terms of a Man in the Mirror distortion of reality. Seen in this light, in a nostalgic silent movie context, the stories don't seem quite so ridiculous as the ravings of a disturbed mind.

The silent movie/early talkie/Universal horror mise-en-scène also relates perfectly as an equivalent for the nature of Offenbach's opera itself. Considered as Offenbach's only real opera - his other vast body of work being classified more as opéra-comique operetta - places an expectation on The Tales of Hoffmann that I don't think the work lives up to. True, the work remained unfinished at the time of the composer's death, ìt has some darker undercurrents and it is a more sophisticated work from Offenbach, but it remains essentially an opéra-comique. It should not be taken too seriously, and too often it is. Not so here with the English Touring Opera's production.

Oliver Townsend's sets are wonderful, transforming cleanly from one piece to the next while retaining a consistent style, the imaginative use of lighting and occasional projections giving them all the individual distinction and mood they need. Sung in English, in a superbly witty translation, the humour is played upon much more than the Romantic melodrama, bringing the right kind of emphasis to the material. The dark moments are there too and it can be quite violent, but again it fits with the horror-movie theme and doesn't feel quite as jarring and, frankly, as unreasonably disturbing as it often does in other productions.

Sung in English moreover with a reduced orchestral arrangement reveals that, despite Offenbach's aspirations to grand opéra, Tales of Hoffmann is more closely related to Gilbert and Sullivan, the production reminding me on more than one occasion particularly of Opera North's production of Ruddigore a few years ago. No wonder that the Buxton audience - where the G&S Festival was a fixture for some time - enjoyed it so much. And rightly so. This Tales of Hoffmann was as lively, bright and entertaining as Offenbach without the pretensions ought to be. Perhaps that's the key to getting to grips with this work.

Good singers help too of course and this one was has an engaging cast who gave strong performances, helped no doubt by the excellent characterisation in James Bonas's direction. In line with the adjustment of emphasis the reason the production worked so successfully was undoubtedly largely down to the terrific performances of Australian baritone Warwick Fyfe in the roles of Lindorf/Coppélius/Dr Miracle/Dappertutto. He completely inhabited the roles with silent movie swirling capes and gothic melodrama that retained an edge of danger, his fine resonant singing however giving the roles much more dimension.

Everyone however equally threw themselves wholeheartedly into the roles. Keith Lemon lookalike Sam Furness was a driven Hoffmann, lyrical and fully involved in the proceedings. Ilona Domnich too had great presence in the various incarnations of the woman of intrigue, Stella. The power wasn't always there, but she took on some of the most challenging singing in any opera very well indeed with a lovely voice, interacting particularly well with the others on stage. This was another strong part of the production, involving all of the supporting roles in a true ensemble fashion, keeping the action on the stage fresh, exciting and inventive, with something to enjoy at every moment.

Links: English Touring Opera