I’ve just returned from a two-week trip and happy that I’m back in time to see Tuesday’s final performance of The Tales of Hoffman, presented by St. Petersburg Opera.
The show has been getting great reviews from patrons and that was echoed this weekend in the review by TB Times arts critic Andrew Meacham.
You can read the entire review by following this link to the Tampa Bay Times. Here’s an excerpt of what Andrew said about the show:
By ANDREW MEACHAM
SAINT PETERSBURG — A pair of dancers cavort with Dionysian zeal as nearby revelers sing drinking songs. That’s how The Tales of Hoffmann starts, and it’s an indication of the lengths the St. Petersburg Opera Company has gone to breathe new life into a work that occupies a tier of its own, neither overtly grand nor entirely comic.
A grainy portrait of the bespectacled composer, Jacques Offenbach, fills a picture frame before each act. The German-born Frenchman composed around 100 operettas from the mid-19th century through 1880. This opera, with a libretto by Jules Barbier, was his last and best-known work. John Kaneklides, last seen by opera fans at the Palladium in South Pacific, makes for a mesmerizing lead as the poet Hoffmann, equipped with matinee idol looks and a electric sound that continues to surprise.
John Kaneklides plays the poet Hoffmann, and Lara Lynn McGill is the singer Antonia in Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann.
The show runs three hours, not including two 20-minute intermissions. There are a lot of characters and subplots, but the basic structure is simple. Hoffmann is in love with love, which sounds fine at first. While awaiting the arrival of his latest crush, an opera singer performing next door to the tavern, he regales students with the accounts of his three previous love affairs, each more disastrous than the one before. These flashbacks, each an act long, draw heavily on two other principals. Kathleen Shelton performs ably and with restraint as Hoffmann’s muse and also as Nicklausse, the muse’s disguise.
Shelton, a mezzo-soprano, and soprano Susan Hellman Spatafora as the courtesan Guilietta combine in Act 3 in the magical duet, Belle nuit, o nuit d’amour, (“Lovely night, oh, night of love”), said to be the most famous barcarole in the classical repertoire.
Also much relied upon is bass-baritone William Roberts in the role of all four of the opera’s “villains,” although that term understates the duties. Roberts is not the most precise singer you’ll ever hear. But his mellifluous tones and interpretations lay necessary flooring without which the production would have suffered. He is part of multiple highlights, including a trio with Lara Lynn McGill as the singer Antonia and Tara Curtis as the ghost of Antonia’s mother.
Kaneklides supplies oxygen from his jaunty Kleinzach aria in the opening scenes to its dark reprisal in the epilogue. As the servant Frantz, Lucas Levy makes the most of his aria about singing, Jour et nuit je me mets en quatre (“Day and night I quarter my mind”), displaying the kind of tenor one more likely find in a leading role. And Kelly Curtin lands a show-stealing performance as Olympia, the wind-up doll who was Hoffmann’s first tragic love.
The aria of the night belonged to McGill, a soprano, who opened the second act with Elle a fui, la tourterelle (“She fled, the dove”), which filled the auditorium and delivered the first out-of-the-park moment for a female vocalist.
Despite influencing others composers (Johann Strauss Jr. and Arthur Sullivan among them), Offenbach wanted a serious opera to his name. The Tales of Hoffmann was his second such effort, but Offenbach died a year before its Paris debut in 1881. American and French composer Ernest Guiraud added orchestration and other modifications, leading to debates and further restorations. But for that kind of community effort, this quiet gem of an opera might have slipped into oblivion. This loving rendition also took a village of talented singers, musicians, dancers and designers, whose combined efforts should more than satisfy opera lovers.
Tickets are available for Tuesday’s final performance at our box office. Call 727 822-3590 or follow this link to purchase online.
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