Devil Take All

By William Bender

By rights Offenbach's opera Tales of Hoffmann should belong to the tenor in the title role. It is he, after all, who goes awooing, however unsuccessfully, after Stella the actress, Olympia the windup doll, Giulietta the courtesan and Antonia the consumptive soprano. If he is not careful, though, the tenor can be easily upstaged by the soprano who normally portrays all four heroines. Her music is uniformly exquisite, and on top of that she gets to show her legs in the gondola scene.

In the shimmering new Hoffmann that Director Tito Capobianco has conceived and staged for the New York City Opera, it is neither the tenor nor the soprano who steals the show. Instead it is the bass, who plays the four incarnations of the devil. No surprise, since the roles are sung by that master of operatic guises and disguises Norman Treigle. By design, and also by the sheer magic of Treigle's acting, this Hoffmann is a black comedy that belongs--curly locks, shtik and fiddle--to the devil.

Capobianco has accomplished this first of all with some visual (but never spoken) additions to the plot that enable not just Lindorf but Coppelius, Dappertutto and Dr. Miracle as well --all played by Treigle--to win the girls that Hoffmann loses. The first act, for example, usually ends with Coppelius seeming to dismantle the doll Olympia before Hoffmann's horrified eyes. He does so in the new production, but then Coppelius and a happy flesh-and-blood Olympia (Soprano Beverly Sills) are seen embracing behind a curtain. Obviously the girl is part poltergeist, too, and in league with Lucifer.

The most obvious alteration in Capobianco's new production is the elimination of the brief epilogue in which Hoffmann is found in a drunken stupor, overwhelmed by his failures. Instead, the final curtain goes to the triumphant Dr. Miracle, who has just caused the poor Antonia to sing herself to death. In one of the chanciest bits of operatic stagecraft seen in New York in years, Dr. Miracle miraculously pops up on the outer rail of the orchestra pit, towers spectacularly over the conductor, and laughs his final laugh of evil victory.

Director Capobianco's inventions are infinitely more than acceptable for the oldest reason known to show business: they work. Given the incomparable team of Treigle and Sills, he has the added advantage of dealing from strength. Sills is in superb voice and thespian mien, as usual. She somehow manages, for instance, to make the viewer simultaneously amused by and sorry for the doll Olympia. Wind her up, and oh, how she warbles--even standing on one foot. Take her hand too passionately, and oh, how she runs away.

Treigle, 45, is one of the best acting basses in the business. Till now he has been best known for his near-definitive interpretation of Boito's Meftstofele. In Hoffmann, he imbues Coppelius with the grace of ballet, which he studied to equip himself for opera. Treigle's Dappertutto is all bluster and crafty swagger, perhaps reflecting the lessons he once took from a Mexican matador. His Dr. Miracle demonstrates the hypnotic effect of the most stylistic, crafty and flexible set of arms and legs in all opera. As to his voice, a huge cannon's roar, there is seemingly no way that it could come from that sunken chest -- but it does. To say that Treigle steals the show from Sills is merely to concede that opera, like the novel and the stage, often lives by virtue of its bad guys. Or, as the dramatist J.M. Barrie put it, "Heaven for climate, hell for company."

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