Ideas touching, playful and entertaining flood director Damiano Michieletto's new production of The Tales of Hoffmann in Sydney

As if to drive its point to make sense of its almost three hours of vivid theatre, the closing moments of French composer Jacques Offenbach’s divinely orchestrated score for The Tales of Hoffmann ring out,  

“We grow strong through love but through tears we are stronger tomorrow.”

For sad and sorry, alcohol-dependent poet and titular character Hoffmann, it might be some consolation after a train wreck of a love affair with a woman he seemingly has Buckley’s chance of ever sharing a life with.  

From the explorative and restless mind of Italian director Damiano Michieletto, the melodious power and richness of Offenbach’s music is a springboard for an imaginative staging that not only captures the essence of the work but floods it with ideas touching, playful and entertaining. 

Iain Henderson as Spalanzani, Jessica Pratt as Olympia 
and the Opera Australia Chorus

In Michieletto’s grasp, Offenbach’s late 19th century opera fantastique effectively channels the desire to love, and loss of it, in the context of a celebration of an artist’s creativity and value. In Offenbach’s works — he died leaving a feast of more than 100 operas — optimism and spark run freely. In The Tales of Hoffmann, Offenbach’s final opera he never got the chance to see premiered, something good comes out of a bad situation. 

The resources of five international opera companies have invested in Michieletto’s ideas — Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Fondazione Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Opera National de Lyon and our own Opera Australia which has finally debuted the production after a Covid-causing calendar hit.

It’s a wild but poignant ride through Michieletto’s satisfyingly tweaked interpretation, placing the audience in  Hoffmann’s absinthe-sozzled existence as a beanie-topped, unkempt and downbeat Hoffmann bares his soul.

In love with the opera diva, Stella, Hoffmann recounts his loves of Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta to a raucous bunch of men in a bar during the interval of Don Giovanni — it’s likely they wouldn’t be returning. 

Michieletto returns Hoffmann to the school classroom where a schoolboy infatuation with Olympia, a beautiful young girl who is really an AI-gifted automaton, sees Hoffmann mocked at by his classmates. The ill young woman Antonia, usually a singer, is brilliantly conceived as an unwell ballet dancer who can barely stand up and Giuletta is a Hollywood-like blonde bombshell under the control of her pimp. To go out on a limb, it’s as if Michieletto highlights the loss of mind, body and soul as individually represented by the intelligent but emotionally dead Olympia, the physically challenged Antonia and the controlled and conscience-starved Giulietta respectively. It’s one way to make sense of what otherwise is a circus of delights.

Agnes Sarkis as Nicklausse and Iván Ayón Rivas as Hoffmann

Six flamboyant dancers breezily weave through the storytelling, Antonia’s home incorporates ballet classes for young girls, a little stage magic is thrown in and there’s a man on stilts that adds to the partying and fun. Hoffmann’s closest friend, Nicklausse, is a pet macaw and his guiding muse a glamorous glitter-sprinkling Mary Poppins-like vision.

Utilising the same creative team that brought Rossini’s Il viaggio à Reims to art gallery life for Opera Australia in 2019, creatives Paolo Fantin (sets), Carla Teti (costumes) and Alessandro Catletti’s (lighting) results sum up to a spatially interesting and effective, aesthetically lush and slick view into an undefined post 19th century setting. Importantly, Chiara Vecchi’s choreography illuminates the story with ongoing vitality and surprise, working a seamless treat with Michieletto’s meticulous directorial eye which demands much of his team. Everyone, including the committed Opera Australia Chorus meet them wonderfully. The total effect dutifully evokes the fantastique of the work. 

And, if opera is all about the quality of the music and singing, every opera-goer wins. While attentions always turn to any soprano taking on the challenge of singing all four heroines — and Jessica Pratt is a stellar fit for all four parts — the titular character Hoffmann is in exceptional hands with Peruvian tenor Iván Ayón Rivas. With the vocal charisma, vigour and depth of feeling he conveys in his Hoffmann, Ayón Rivas shows what a star performer he is, a mere 30 year-old talent and set to impress for decades to come. Amongst others, Ayón Rivas has studied under Juan Diego Florez and it shows. 

As Stella, Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta, Pratt combines blissful operatic seduction with excellent acting. First, skyrocketing her appeal as a prettily dressed Olympia with precision, clarity and thrilling staccato and trills in “Les oiseaux dans la charmille” (opera’s sparkling “Doll Song”), Pratt follows up with a devastatingly sung display of the hope and hopelessness in Antonia’s test of strength.  

Then, as Giulietta, Pratt not only maintains the power and freshness of voice she begins with, but demonstrates her ability to autograph her music with unique beauty. The insertion of the seductive coloratura aria, “L’amour lui dit: la belle”, proves the perfect vehicle  to showcase both Giulietta’s attitude to love and Pratt’s translucent, flexible instrument. 

Marko Mimica as Coppelius

Croatian bass baritone Marko Mimica brings a handsomely burnished voice to the party, relishing the four villainous parts as Hoffmann’s nemesis, Lindorf and reappearances as Coppelius, Doctor Miracle and Dapertutto. Agnes Sarkis never ceases to endear as Nichlausse the macaw, Sian Sharp elegantly charms as Hoffmann’s muse and characterful tenor Adam Player is a hit in his four incarnations alongside a long list of thoroughly committed and entertaining artists. 

The Opera Australia Chorus are not only kept on their toes but raise the roof and spirits enormously with their harmonious, terrifically shaded sound. The entire vocal score is buoyantly supported by conductor Guillaume Tourniaire and a finely balanced Opera Australia Orchestra sparkle in the pit, even in the face of a minor technical glitch as the Prologue was about to commence at Tuesday’s performance. 

Two more performances remain before it’s packed up for a season at Teatro La Fenice in November with Iván Ayón Rivas reprising the title character but minus a singular soprano singing all leading female roles. That alone makes getting the chance to see Jessica Pratt in Michieletto’s imaginative production somewhat extra special.  

The Tales of Hoffmann 

Opera Australia

Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Until 22nd July 2023

Production Photos: Keith Saunders