Yesterday afternoon we saw The Tales of Hoffmann, the last opera of this season and the final production for Seattle Opera Director Speight Jenkins, who is retiring after 31 years. Most of us sitting in the opera house can't remember a time when Speight wasn't the director. He will be replaced by Aiden Lang, coming to Seattle from the New Zealand Opera.
The new young opera director will bring changes, big or subtle, as happened at the Seattle Symphony when Gerard Schwartz retired. As John says, Speight Jenkins knows his Seattle audience, and he developed a stage style that combined contemporary campiness with the traditional. It's a matter of opinion whether you find this entertaining or distracting. For example, the wind-up doll in Tales of Hoffmann became a "robot" yesterday and her head was sawed off at the end of her dance. Haw haw, went the audience!
There seems to be more "inappropriate" laughter at the opera these days-- sometimes you can blame the translations of the subtitles. It's a bit like watching a foreign movie, which gives the gist of what's happening without the subtleties. Other times the laughter is inexplicable, as in deeply tragic operas like Rigoletto or Tosca, which some people find hilarious. To each his own.
The music in Tales of Hoffmann is beautiful, the story is silly. The drunkard and not-so-likable poet Hoffmann becomes infatuated with the opera singer Stella. As a distraction, he tells his drinking buddies the story of three past loves: a living doll with no brains, a beautiful dying artist, and a courtesan. Olympia, Antonina and Giulietta, who "become" Stella in the end. Three perfect women in one, wow, how original. When I was younger, I found this male stereotype fantasy annoying. I'm over it now; the opera is about the music.
Hoffmann straddles the border between serious and comic. I was looking at pictures from past productions, and opera companies have had fun staging it over the years, some making Seattle's robot doll look pretty mild.
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