Skylight & Milwaukee Opera Theatre Breathe Fresh Life Into THE TALES OF HOFFMANN

by Kelsey Lawler

Instrument strings, a violin's curve, a handful of pianos, a gilded harp, a barrage of percussion. With the scene thus set, the actors and audience find themselves immersed in music even before the first notes are sung at the Cabot Theater for the Skylight's Tales of Hoffmann, a collaboration with the Milwaukee Opera Theatre. The kinetic scene celebrates the inner workings of the art of music-making - just as Hoffmann's tales, though tragic, shed light on the artist's journey from inspiration to creation.

The story follows the idea-starved poet, Hoffmann, and his artistic muse along a three-pronged quest for love and vision. In the first chapter, Hoffmann's love interest is a mechanical doll. In the second, it's a girl who suffers from a rare disease wherein she will die if she sings. The third finds the protagonist enamored with a deceitful courtesan who steals his reflection. Each tale is otherworldly - and each, though playful at times, ends in tragedy.

It helps that this collaboration is presented in English. It's a brand new translation, unveiled for the first time in Milwaukee. The once sung-through, French opera of over three hours has been distilled into three acts, clocking in at about two hours of stage time. Spoken dialogue breaks up the soaring voices, too, giving the audience some respite from deciphering the lyrics. Yes, even an opera sung in English requires ample concentration. Read the audience guide beforehand.

Bringing the Tales to life is a cast of thirteen - eight women and five men, many of them Skylight and MOT veterans. As there are more parts than people, the villain is played by the previous lover in each subsequent tale - a fun opportunity for the sopranos. Truly, the three sopranos - Cecilia Davis, Susan Wiedmeyer, and Ariana Douglas - are each sensational. In particular, the Doll's Song in Act One is like the olympics of arias. Davis masters it with such spellbinding ease, it's an absolute wonder to behold.

Then there's Hoffmann himself, played by the brilliant John Kaneklides. Breathtakingly sublime, his tenor voice cuts through all others with its richness and warmth. Plus he's tall, dark, and handsome to boot - the textbook leading man. This is swoon-worthy stuff. Hoffmann's muse, the always-wonderful Diane Lane, lends a dash of humor and jaunty energy to the sometimes over-emotional journey. Lane's presence on stage is a constant delight - and her consistently strong vocals don't hurt either.

The overall tone of Hoffmann is rife with broken hearts and a healthy dose of the macabre. With this comes a wondrous, dreamlike quality that the Skylight and MOT have captured exquisitely.

The scenery itself, the on-stage orchestra, the celestial lighting, and creative ways in which characters come and go - it all serves to highlight the fantasy in this "opera fantastique."

Kudos to Scenic Designer Lisa Anne Schlenker, Lighting Designer Jason Fassl, and Stage Director Jill Anna Ponasik for the surreal and artful staging.

In the final scene, a celestial light bathes the stage as Hoffmann reflects upon his series of tragic romances. At one point, the Muse had said, "Love sure knows how to keep us in the dark." Now that darkness is illuminated, getting to the heart of the matter in Offenbach's opera.

The Tales of Hoffmann, for all its supernatural qualities, shows that through darkness and confusion, new ideas come into being. The curtain falls with the poet's flame rekindled - his artistic inspiration renewed. Ethereal and uplifting, the Skylight and Milwaukee Opera Theatre have indeed dug deep into the darkness and brought to light something to sigh about.

Skylight's "Tales of Hoffmann" is an oddball opera at its most excellent

By Gwen Rice, Special to OnMilwaukee

Story Highlights
Where: The Cabot Theatre in the Broadway Theatre Center
Who: Directed by Jill Anna Ponasik
Why go? It's visually stunning and a very un-stuffy introduction to opera.

When I read the synopsis for the Milwaukee Opera Theatre collaboration with Skylight Opera Theatre's "Tales of Hoffmann" before the show on Saturday night, I said, "Well, that can't be right." But the woman sitting next to me, an opera aficionado, assured me that a poet falling in love with a mechanical doll and the inventor selling eyeballs were standard parts of the first act. "It's opera," she said plainly. "All the plots are ridiculous."

Between the reassurance of my fellow audience member and the brilliantly bizarre staging of the Offenbach piece, I settled in for a delightful evening of extreme contrasts – a lush score of the 19th century opera juxtaposed with fantastic stage pictures that draw on goth, steampunk and early science fiction. It's a combination that is utterly entertaining where anything and everything could happen.

As the project's gifted director, Jill Anna Ponasik, explains in the program notes, this version of "The Tales of Hoffmann" is "an adaptation based on an opera, based on a play, based on a collection of short stories by the early surrealist author E.T.A. Hoffmann." Sung in English instead of French, it is condensed in all aspects – using fewer singers (13) and a pared down orchestra (only pianos, percussion and harp) to present a slightly shorter version (two and a half hours with two intermissions) of the essential story. But instead of smaller, the result feels essential and more concentrated.

The fantastical story focuses on the tortured poet Hoffmann (John Kanikledes), who isn't just unlucky in love – he's a walking disaster. Lovesick and beaten after pursuing three impossible matches, Hoffmann's muse (Diane Lane) helps him work through writer's block by recounting these sad and incredible tales. Once his twisted, broken heart is unburdened, he can happily resume his only healthy relationship – with his shape-shifting muse of poetry. The words start flowing, and the world is better for it.

As the dazed and disheveled poet Hoffmann, Kanikledes does most of the heavy lifting in the opera. His warm tenor fills the theater with both the giddiness of new love and its tragic loss, desperation and despair. Dressed in a swanky, celery-colored silk suit, embroidered with red flora on the arms, he is a tender flower in a dark woods.

Fortunately there also are plenty of smaller, juicy roles for the women in the opera. Cross-dressing and appearing as his best friend Nicklausse, muse Diane Lane is an impish pal in turquoise velvet who rolls her eyes at Hoffmann's misguided antics along with the audience. Her textured soprano shines at the beginning of Act II as she tries to wrestle her petulant charge back to his poetry.

In a nice parallel, the three objects of Hoffmann's attraction also double as villains. A mechanical doll who cannot feel love (Cecilia Davis) later appears as an evil quack doctor; a frail girl in mourning who can no longer sing (Susan Wiedmeyer) re-enters as a fierce, feather-caped devil; and a courtesan whose only interest in Hoffmann is to dupe him so she can win an enormous diamond (Ariana Douglas) first appears as a blood-spattered mad scientist, somewhere between Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Emmet Brown from "Back to the Future."

Each performer embraces the eccentricities of these characters. Davis is jarring as the robot girl, moving and singing in a stiff, mechanical fashion, grasping her twin: a miniature doll with glowing red eyes. And Douglas is cold beauty incarnate as the gorgeous temptress in red and black taffeta, draped in dying roses, enchanted only by sparkling and equally cold jewels. Her smaller but self-assured soprano delighted in collecting men's hearts and souls. But as the tragic and suffering Antonia, Wiedmeyer was the most impressive of the three. Her enchanting voice, like Kanikledes', scaled the heights of love and the depths of loss and torment. As the virginal victim in the second tale, it was even more satisfying to see her re-emerge as a devious sorcerer, determined to own Hoffmann's very reflection.

The other important "characters" in the piece were the musicians – all positioned prominently onstage – and the bold visual style of the production, brought to life by scenic designer Lisa Anne Schlenker, lighting designer Jason Fassl and costume designer Sonya Berlovitz. As if the story was caught within an enormous musical machine, the stage held functional pianos as well as those tipped on end. A platform full of countless percussion pieces towered over the action, while the strings of an enormous piano criss-crossed to form the backdrop. An oversized neck of a violin served as stairsteps, and characters floated across the stage on instrument chariots, illuminated with strings of neon lights. Fassl's shrill red washes punctuated with bright blue made the black and white clad chorus look even more like extras from a Tim Burton film.

This heightened sense of horror underscores that there is so much to fear in Hoffmann's world: science, industrialization, medicine, the supernatural and the scheming, unfeeling, fragile states of women. It is truly a poet's nightmare. But a world that audiences will revel in.

'The Tales of Hoffmann' Told As Never Before

BY JOHN JAHN

The Tales of Hoffmann was the only opera to flow from the pen of Jacques Offenbach, a 19th- century French composer best known for his sprightly overtures and exuberant use of the dance style that was all the rage of his day, the can-can. Operas are supposed to be somewhat more “serious” and “loftier” works of art than their lighter cousins, the operettas. It was the latter genre that really made Offenbach famous; it’s no wonder then that the spirit of the operetta infuses The Tales of Hoffmann—a spirit that also moves the current production by Milwaukee Opera Theatre and SMT.

For this production, the companies made some very good choices. For one, it’s in English (a well-enunciated English at that) rather than its original French (though, thankfully, French is maintained for the exquisite third-act barcarolle, “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour”). Secondly, rather than ponderous sung-through recitative between musical ensembles and arias, it has spoken dialog. Offenbach’s original was composed, of course, for full orchestra; here we have two pianos, a harp and a wide variety of percussion instruments and noise-making devices (expertly played by Michael Lorenz). All in all, this is a decidedly scaled-down Hoffmann that, while now much more operetta than opera, works completely as a work of musical art.

Voices in the production are uniformly good. John Kaneklides’ tenor as the titular poet rings true and clear; Cecilia Davis’ lovely soprano hit all the high notes in the work’s famous “Doll Aria” of Act One. The always entertainingly expressive Diane Lane was excellent as Hoffmann’s friend, Nicklausse (and more than merely that, as attendees of this new take on the tale will eventually learn). Notice I’m not mentioning main characters of the original: Hoffmann’s rival, Lindorf and love interest Stella, an opera singer. Both characters have been written out of this substantially altered Hoffmann.

Along with the fine, lyrical singing went kinetic stage action that kept the show moving along nicely, fine period costuming and a superb set design reminiscent of your grandparents’ attic crossed with the latest of steampunk sensibilities.

Given its composer’s death before the final product was actually finished, Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann has always been open to interpretation. Gratefully, the production currently playing in Milwaukee’s Third Ward is one that articulates Hoffmann’s tales in an exceedingly successful, thoroughly entertaining fashion.