Tales of Hoffman
We attended the best staging of this opera that we have ever seen. The surprise was the Muse sung by Kate Lindsey. She was portrayed as a jealous love of Hoffman although she was his friend. We loved it. It was supposed to be a snowy day but after 15 minutes of flurries yesterday we had rain and nothing else. The production was perfect technically - no glitches. What a glorious piece of music.
NY Times Hoffman Review Dec 3, 2009
Daves Blog Hoffman Review Dec 20, 2009
Libbie and I discussed the role of the muse. I learned a new term, androgynous, which means neither male nor female. At first the muse seemed in love with Hoffman then seemed to plot against him on the side of the villains. This post has an interesting interpretation:
Nicklausse/Muse's apparent collusion with the Villains should be especially controversial. I see it as part of Sher's extremely Muse-centered interpretation: it's all about the competition between the Muse and Stella for Hoffman's love. The Three Heroines have no real existence, and Sher's staging of the Prologue makes clear that both the Muse and Stella know what's at stake in Luther's tavern that night.
The Muse doesn't really collude with the Villains (well, except maybe when Nicklausse lends Dr. Miracle his wrist to take “Antonia's” pulse). But she wants to see Hoffman through to the far side of each (imaginary) affair. For that reason, it's natural that the Villain of each tale takes Nicklause into his confidence. They have aligned interests, but for different reasons.
I explain this more in the blogpost. Ultimately I don't particularly accept or reject Sher's interpretation: it's just one more way to interpret an extremely interpretable opera. Some of you may remember that in one iteration of Capobianco's production at NYCO, he had the Villains in collusion, not with Nicklausse, but with the Heroines! Each act ended with the heroine and the villain laughing at Hoffman: not only Giulietta, where it's written that way in the Guiraud/Choudens version; but also a re-integretated Olympia – and even Antonia, who, instead of dropping dead, walked through the painting of her mother to join Dr. Miracle in joint derision of the hero. (It wasn't always done that way, but it definitely was on one of NYCO's LA tours. Maybe they thought everyone in LA was stoned and would prefer an approach like this.)
The press mad much ado of the fact that the topless woman in the barroom scene wore pasties for the HD performance. Not sure who they think is attending these performances or what they're protecting us from, but here's the barroom girls without pasties but censored:
