A huge eyeball in the wall of a classroom suddenly starts to swivel. A top-hatted man on stilts lurches into a bar and performs slow, ungainly circuits before disappearing followed by dancers dressed as rats. A woman is trapped in a bolt of cloth held taut by two rampaging horned figures, her features protruding through it – except when the cloth drops, another devilish dancer is in her place. A guest wearing the curved beak of the plague doctor stalks a Venetian carnival party. A letter combusts in mid-air.
There are creepy details galore in Damiano Michieletto’s new production of Offenbach’s opéra fantastique The Tales of Hoffmann. It’s a staging that takes seriously the dark side of ETA Hoffmann’s extraordinarily weird stories – and of Offenbach’s late-career attempt to prove himself beyond operetta. Under Antonello Manacorda, the ROH Orchestra provided grit on demand.
