OPERA REVIEW : The Met Retells Some Old Tales

The breathless news at the Metropolitan Opera these days involves Christopher Columbus, Philip Glass and David Henry Hwang. But the world premiere of their unlikely collaboration, “The Voyage,” won’t take place until Oct. 12. In the meantime, Lincoln Center is hosting business more or less as usual.

It is big, glamorous, costly, conservative business. That’s how New Yorkers like their opera.

To open the season, James Levine turned to Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” in an unreasonable facsimile of the fanciful production staged by Otto Schenk and designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen a decade ago.

“Hoffmann,” as Music Center patrons know all too well, poses some tricky questions in matters of edition and interpretation. The composer died before the 1881 premiere, leaving a confusing mass of unfinished--or at least unsorted, unwanted or unpolished--music.

Most of us grew up loving the essentially corrupt, undeniably effective version published by the house of Choudens, which substituted recitatives for dialogue, re-ordered the acts, interpolated music from other sources, reduced the central character of Nicklausse to a comprimario, and scrapped large chunks of the score. In recent years, several scholars have discredited Choudens and attempted to restore what they deemed to be Offenbach’s original wishes.

Unfortunately, no one knows exactly what those wishes might ultimately have been. Offenbach was practical, a man of the theater who, it is safe to guess, would not have wanted to try his audience’s patience with too much of a good thing. It is also safe to guess, however, that he would have written recitatives had he wanted them, and he certainly did create enough music for this score to preclude the necessity of cannibalizing others.

Most modern productions of “Hoffmann” either ignore recent research and respect the outdated Choudens model, or go for an “authentic” version that bloats the score, blurs the narrative and deletes some of the most popular tunes. The Met, this season, has attempted a compromise.

It retains the basic Choudens components, including the dubious recitatives, but adds a lot of unfamiliar music culled from the Fritz Oeser edition of 1977 (already controversial). The acts are now played in the correct order--the Venice escapade coming last--and Nicklausse--a.k.a. Hoffmann’s Muse--gets to sing more arias than the hero.

The result, which lasts nearly four hours, is cumbersome, oddly focused and even a bit anticlimactic. It honors neither traditional fish nor musicological fowl.

Levine conducted it on Friday with weighty yet speedy brilliance. Lesley Koenig redirected Schenk’s traffic patterns resourcefully. Schneider-Siemssen’s original designs still exuded their storybook magic, and his handsome new Venetian set facilitated a quick transition to the expanded epilogue.

The cast was dominated by Placido Domingo’s ardent yet pensive, even witty Hoffmann. If only someone could persuade him to be a bit more generous with his lovely mezza voce . . . . Carol Vaness found the virtuosic task of impersonating all four of his disparate loves somewhat trying, even with a judiciously transposed Doll Song. Samuel Ramey exuded properly dark and oily menace as the quadruple nemesis. (Although both were bravely conscientious, they could not erase memories of Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle.)

Susanne Mentzer worked hard as the sprightly, overexposed Nicklausse. Anthony Laciura brought a nicely muted dramatic edge to the duties of the four servants, and deserved special bravos for singing , not croaking, Frantz’s pathetic couplets.

Nostalgia, as some sage one observed, isn’t what it used to be. Nor is the Franco Zeffirelli production of “Falstaff,” first staged by the Met in its old house 28 years ago.

The lavish, stagy sets have faded a bit, and the fussy distractions of the final scene (unruly livestock, cutesy-wutesy kiddies, banal Halloween charades) still rob Windsor Forest of its moonstruck lyricism. Paul Mills now directs the second-hand funny business.

It is time, obviously, for a new “Falstaff” at the Met. In the meantime, the ubiquitous Levine--who conducts here with nimble aplomb--has given us a new Falstaff: Paul Plishka. The grateful assignment is, no doubt, a reward for his quarter-century of faithful service to the company.

The fat old knight is extraordinarily complex, in Verdi as in Shakespeare. He must be foolish but not a clown, wise but hardly clever, dignified even in his debasement. He has seen far better days, but he still is Sir John.

To project all this poignantly, and amusingly too, a singing-actor must be comfortable with the protagonist’s mentality as well as his physique. He must savor the light and shade of the text. He must acquire the proper vocabulary of movement to complement the phony paunch.

This takes time. And the help of a forceful director.

Only the third bass to attempt this baritone role at the Met, Plishka had more trouble with the character on Saturday than with the tessitura (though he did encounter a little strain in the high climaxes). He swaggered energetically, roared decently, crooned deftly, yet settled for generalities just when one most wanted specifics.

A stellar ensemble offered uneven support. Mirella Freni played a radiant Alice to the forceful, quasi-buffo Ford of Bruno Pola. Barbara Bonney floated exquisite pianissimo tones as Nannetta, opposite the grating Fenton of Frank Lopardo. Marilyn Horne growled distorted Reverenza s as a comedic Quickly. Piero de Palma, a distinguished veteran of countless Italian-opera wars, made an unheralded debut as an understated Cajus.