The Tales of Hoffmann, English National Opera

For all its comic fantasy and lilting tunes, there’s nothing pastel-coloured about Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Deaths are frequent and bloody, humour is macabre, and emotions run high – being late to the pub is cause enough for violence and conspiracy theories. It’s a world of sliding screens, where a smile always threatens to become a leer, a kiss a murder. Who better (who else?) to inhabit this operatic fantasy-land than Richard Jones, a director who relishes the elision and collision of kitsch and the grotesque. His steel-capped whimsy here hits its mark with deadly and delicious accuracy.

There are few operatic comedies that don’t overstay their welcome; the quick thrust of good humour and opera’s wide-load pacing don’t always line up, and when they fail the result can be desperately tedious. The Tales of Hoffmann is always a risk in this respect. Lacking a definitive edition, at its longest the opera endures for a Wagnerian four to five hours, but with some brutal trimming can be reduced to a more manageable three. The compromise (based on the Michael Kaye/Jean-Christophe Keck edition but with changes including the Oeser ending to Giulietta’s Act III) currently being staged at English National Opera may err on the lengthy side, but thanks to Jones’s imaginative direction and Giles Cadle’s designs (not to mention one of the finest ensemble casts of the season) this psychedelic trip down the rabbit-hole never palls.

Barry Banks's Hoffmann is a fever of late-Romantic passion

The curtain rises on Hoffmann himself (Barry Banks), alone and struggling to write. His roar of frustration as he hurls yet another sheet of paper aside becomes the lowering orchestral opening, and as orchestral colour and pace gather we find ourselves abandoning the 19^th-century world of the pub for an altogether more free-form sequence of worlds for the stories of Hoffmann’s three beloveds – Fifties kitsch for Olympia (“the little girl”), 19^th-century Gothic for Antonia (“the artist”) and contemporary pop-art for Giulietta (“the reckless beauty”). Anchoring these adventures are Cadle’s designs, which each inhabit the same architectural space, reimagining the fixtures with dextrous variation.

This coherence of design, coupled with the authentic casting of a single singer not only for the three villains of the piece, but also for Hoffmann’s three loves (four if you count Stella), gives a welcome sense of through-direction and thematic coherence to a work that can so easily feel laboriously episodic.

Offenbach’s score might not stand up to close musicological scrutiny, but his gauzy melodies and bravura set pieces offer a grateful platform for singers. Leading the cast was a technically secure Barry Banks, whose Hoffmann is a fever of late-Romantic passion. From a poised “Kleinzach” he grew into the more sustained lyricism required by the Antonia and Giulietta episodes, offering not only his habitual beauty of tone, but rather more vocal weight that we’ve heard from him before. With Jones’s production undermining emotional authenticity at every turn, Banks struggled slightly with the arc of his hero – not a problem shared by young American soprano Georgia Jarman (pictured above), making her ENO debut as Olympia/Antonia/Giulietta/Stella.