Nonetheless, this staging works thanks to ingenious acting direction, in which each action gives way to the next. If that sounds bizarre to you, it certainly is. Within this framework, the stories of Hoffmann’s love life were played out, of which the Antonia tale should be noted as exemplary: in an icy chamber à la Doctor Zhivago, we see Antonia’s mother (the solid Martina Mikelić) as the girl coming out of the cake, or rather of a kind of iceberg in the events that follow, Antonia is sort of conducted to death by a horde of dinner-jacketed zombies sporting Simon Rattle hairstyles and swinging luminous batons. This staging evokes those fires with soot-covered proscenium, including loges. The starting point for this concept is not just the work itself, but also its mysterious fate: after all, just before the first performance of the work in 1881, the Vienna Ringtheater burnt down, with the loss of around 400 lives in 1887, the sheet music for the orchestra was lost in another fire at the Opéra-Comique. For the Volksoper, Renaud Doucet and his designer André Barbe have concocted a courageous mix which is certainly colourful but by no means harmless: in the end, the devil has his finger in every pie.
The Tales of Hoffman actually calls itself an opéra fantastique, however, it’s just as comique as tragique and is therefore a veritable feast for directors looking for a challenge.
0 kommentar(er)
