Met Opera (HD broadcast), 05/10/2024

Offenbach : Les contes d'Hoffmann

Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York

Marco Armiliato

It's been nine years since I last saw Bartlett Sher's production of Les contes d'Hoffmann for the Met.  Looking back at my blog for that occasion, I can say that the lighting has definitely improved, and that the costume now looks nearer to 1900 than 1920, though there's still a touch of the Weimar cabaret about the first act in particular.  On the whole, though, I feel a little less kindly inclined towards it than I was then.  I find the outer acts visually noisy, with a lot of on-stage clutter, and the sparsity of the Munich act comes as something of a temporary relief.

However, the characters are playing out rather differently.  Bernheim's Hoffmann has none of Grigolo's naïvety, but a good deal of cynicism much of the time, while Vasilisa Berzhanskaya's Niklausse/Muse is unequivocally working in tandem with Lindorf et al to wreck Hoffmann's love-lives.  At least she shows some regret at times, and she sang well, with a dark-grained timbre, though the big Act 2 romance was a little overblown.  Erin Morley sounds as bright and brilliant as she did back in 2015, which, for a high coloratura voice of that nature, is fairly remarkable, they're not usually known for durability.  Pretty Yende was a decent Antonia, and Clémentine Margaine a richly opulent Giulietta, while Christian van Horn was maybe hamming it up a little as the villains, but he brought real relish to his roles, which was enjoyable.  Aaron Blake was excellent as Franz.

However, on the whole, the performance left me a bit cold.  On the technical side, throughout most of the evening, there were repeated incidents of timing being very slightly off between orchestra and stage.  This was rather surprising, as it was far from being the first performance of the run, and Marco Armiliato is a seasoned hand at the Met - we were told it was his 500th performance today.  There should not have been any instances of the singers not being perfectly in time with the orchestra.  Van Horn was the one who suffered most from this, but I think everyone, including the chorus, except Bernheim, went through it at least once.  The differences were very slight, but I found it disturbing.

Dramatically, though, for me the problem lay with Bernheim.  He's a magnificent singer, the voice stayed firm and sure throughout this taxing role, and there were some really beautifully produced inflections, not to mention perfect French diction.  However, that cynical Hoffmann seems to be his, more than a director's.  I saw the broadcast of Hoffmann from this year's Salzburg Festival, and noted the same thing.  At the time I assumed it was an effect of the decidedly strange production, but here it was again, a kind of emotional detachment from the part, as if he doesn't believe in it.  If your Hoffmann is detached from the goings-on, then it's going to have a knock-on effect on the rest of the cast, and especially Antonia, who is the character Hoffmann interacts with most intimately, and Yende consequently never quite came alight, so the marvellous final trio of that act (despite a fine Mother in Eve Gigliotti) was not as gripping as it should have been.  

Vocally, especially as a whole, the cast was extremely sound, but Bernheim needs to decide whether he really wants to sing Hoffmann, and if so, needs to invest in it more deeply on an emotional level.

[Next: 15th October]