Royal Opera

4th December 2008

I remember the 2004 revival of John Schlesinger’s production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann very well. It starred a young gentleman, unfamiliar to the Primi Divi at that time, with the name of Rolando Villazon. Mr Villazon gave a performance of such intensity and exceptionally fine singing, it did not need a Hairy McMungo to predict his very bright future.

Almost five years later, Mr Villazon returned to the role, and I looked forward to his performance with great eagerness – and just a little trepidation. Mr Villazon’s gifts are undoubted, and his commercial success undeniable. However, several of his recent performances – excepting, of course, his outstanding Lensky for the Royal Opera – have been, perhaps, slightly disappointing, although this is unsurprising considering Mr Villazon’s worryingly busy schedule. It is not always appreciated how a career in opera – or, indeed, in any performance categories – is not only technically demanding: it is also exhausting, psychologically and even physically. So Mr Villazon’s recent withdrawal from a number of performances, whilst disappointing to those of us who admire him, was an understandable and probably sensible precaution.

If Mr Villazon’s return to the Royal Opera in the recent new production of Don Carlo was not quite the tour-de-force everyone was expecting, there was, nevertheless, a great deal to be enjoyed in his performance. And the opportunity to see him again as Hoffmann was also to be welcomed. If he was excellent in the role at the beginning of his international acclaim (or at least the first point at which I became aware of Mr Villazon), how would he perform now, some years later, when he has no doubt matured not only as a performer, but as a man?

It was very unfortunate the Primi Divi did not find this out. Although Mr Villazon, to my knowledge, did appear at most performances, he was absent on the night of the 4th December. December, of course, very much the time of year for illnesses and ailments, which are always going to be far more debilitating for a singer than for people in most other professions. But perhaps it is a particular concern regarding a singer who has not so long ago made a number of cancellations. I do hope very much that Mr Villazon is now in the best of health, and that we will have another opportunity to see him in one of his greatest roles.

While the absence of a scheduled singer is always a disappointment, the Royal Opera can always be relied on to produce an interesting replacement. Many examples include the soprano Miriam Murphy, a truly outstanding Lady Macbeth; Dimitris Tiliakos, whose replacement of Simon Keenlyside as Rodrigo surely couldn’t have greatly disappointed even Mr Keenlyside’s most devoted fans; Jette Parker Young Artist Robert Murray, perhaps my favourite recent Tamino for the Royal Opera – and, of course, that famous incident where the leading lady was replaced by a male singer: Bejun Mehta’s taking over the role of Orlando from Alice Coote. William Towers, who replaced Mr Mehta as Medoro (and recently appeared in the title role for Independent Opera), was yet another excellent understudy.

So Zvetan Michailov, Mr Villazon’s understudy, had some great acts to follow. Like most of the above he was making his Royal Opera debut. However, a requirement of Hoffman (at least for me) is that he needs to be able to dominate the stage – perhaps not to the same extent as a character such as Don Giovanni, but I believe he needs a certain strength and vibrancy, and this is probably not at all easy without some familiarity with the production and the venue. Mr Michailov was also sharing the stage with some great character actors. With this in mind, he did extremely well; however, if this is not taken into consideration, he perhaps seemed just slightly colourless and not entirely comfortable. But he has an attractive voice with a lightness about it that lends itself well to operetta, and it was certainly very easy to sympathise with him as each act drew to a close, and Hoffman found himself alone.

Offenbach’s original version of the opera saw the story of Antonia placed before that of Giulietta, but a convention developed of playing the two stories the opposite way around, and the Royal Opera has adhered to this. I am certainly a great advocate of directors who at least attempt to produce what composer and librettist intended, but there is undeniably a dramatic advantage in putting Giulietta between Olympia and Antonia. The latter two both have innocent and endearing qualities, and the endings to their stories are similar. Giulietta is a much more independent character, and she ends her relationship with Hoffmann in a much happier position than either Olympia or Antonia, so, in the interests of contrast, it is satisfying to watch the stories in this order.

However, if Giulietta does come after Antonia, and therefore before the final scene with Stella, there is a greater sense of Hoffman’s falling into a downward spiral. Hoffmann’s ladies, with Giulietta in this position, become arguably more knowing, more intelligent, more independent and proactive as the story goes on. So, in the interests of a continuous and developing plot line, the original has its advantages too.

There is a tradition of the Four Heroines’ being played all by the same singer, and, as does happen in this production, the same applying to the Four Villains and the Four Servants. Again, this is in some ways rather satisfying as even though there is some similarity between Olympia’s story and Antonia’s, and between Giulietta’s and the small storyline given to Stella, there are also parallels between all four in terms of how each lady affects Hoffmann.

However, the Four Heroines are vocally so different – Olympia a role for a high, light coloratura soprano; Antonia for a richer-voiced lyric soprano, Giulietta for a darker-toned mezzo-soprano and Stella, a speaking role, most suited to an actress – it is unrealistic to expect there to be many singers in the world that can perform all four in the expected style to a sufficiently effortlessly high standard. Even on the occasions where the Four Heroines are played by two singers, there is a very understandable tendency for the performers to be better-suited to one than to the other, with the result that that the excellence of a soprano’s Olympia, for example, is likely to appear to the detriment of the same singer’s perfectly adequate Antonia. For this reason, I am very much in favour of four singers’ performing these four very different roles. The Four Villains or Four Servants, on the other hand, appear be far more easily performed by one singer.

Olympia was sung at this performance by Ekaterina Lekhina. Miss Lekhina was delightful in her mechanical doll movements, the accuracy of her coloratura was stunning, and she was also adept at the comedic aspect. Christine Rice’s Giulietta was clearly not the most upstanding young lady, but had a rather intoxicating charm that a young man like Hoffman might very easily find irresistible. Miss Rice has always been an extremely fine performer, but in the last few years she has become even more versatile, both vocally and dramatically. Katie Van Kooten portrayed Antonia’s fragility convincingly, whilst singing strongly throughout, in another excellent performance from the former Jette Parker Young Artist.

Olga Sabadoch is a surprising choice to play Stella, being not an actress but a ballet dancer (the character, to make matters even more confusing, at least for me, is an opera singer). Her physical bearing was certainly impressive, which is no doubt one advantage of casting a dancer. But I did have my reservations about whether she would be sufficiently comfortable with the spoken text. I am far from an expert on ballet (or, of course, opera), but I do not know of any ballets which require the dancer to speak.

Yet Miss Sabadoch proved to be an excellent choice in every respect. She spoke her French lines beautifully, and managed to present Stella as a strong character, more like Giulietta than the others, but clearly a character in her own right. Indeed, it might have been difficult to find an actress resident in England who spoke French sufficiently well: the role is probably far too small to tempt many French actresses across the channel. Even so, it would be difficult to imagine a better performance than Miss Sabadoch’s.

Gidon Saks was extremely fine as each of the Four Villans, each one clearly characterised, and he certainly seemed to take great delight in his villainy. Graham Clark’s Four Servants were similarly distinctive, and there were good contributions from a number of current Young Artists, including Changham Lim (Hermann), Ji-Min Park (Nathanael) and particularly Kostas Smoriginas as Hoffman’s rival Schlemil, with former Young Artist Matthew Rose appearing as Crespel.

Antonio Pappano conducted, so any doubts on my part should probably be discounted, but the music did sound rather more like an operetta than I was expecting. I don’t want to imply that an operetta is in any way musically unsophisticated, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House were completely comfortable in the style, so perhaps my ears are at fault.

Barry Tone

primi-divi at hotmail.co.uk