Sir, Madam, do you like your opera quirky? A singing mechanical doll? A giant shaving mirror? The Evil Eye itself in a piano? Then welcome to the inebriated, fantastical, phantasmagorical world of E.T.A. Hoffmann, brought to you by Mr. Richard Jones with a delightful musical accompaniment by M. Jacques Offenbach.
Jones’s new production for English National Opera (and Bayerische Staatsoper, where we reviewed it last year) succeeds theatrically more than musically. Jones sets the three episodes as the fevered outpourings of Hoffmann’s drunken imagination, extracting masses of fun from the weirdness of each scene but also making the most of the linkages between them. So once we’ve been told that Hoffmann is fed up with love and seeking solace in poetry and drink, a bottle is always present at the front of the stage; three of the four very different rooms are set within the same distorted perspective frame; the four incarnations of his beloved played by the same singer, American soprano Georgia Jarman.
The settings and costumes are delectable, most particularly in the scene with Olympia the mechanical doll, where the details of every costume were remarkable. Olympia is truly gorgeous in massive blonde wig and huge sky blue gown which is used alternately for mannequin, Jarman or, most cleverly, half of each. Candy floss colours abound in the coats of her father and his ghastly assistant Cochinelle (played in splendid drag by Simon Butteriss). In the next act, there’s a memorable coup de théâtre when the consumptive Antonia opens the sheet music in her piano to discover the disembodied head of the evil Dr. Miracle urging her to sing herself to death. There’s much attention to detail: I particularly liked the platinum disc mounted on Antonia’s wall in memory of her singing mother; overall, this production gets a huge thumbs up for illuminating the story.