Dustin’ Off ‘Hoffmann’

Vinson Cole has sung the title role of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” at La Scala and the Paris Opera. But when he sings it this week for Opera Pacific, it will be in a version unfamiliar to many opera-goers.

How can that be?

Offenbach’s death before the work’s 1881 premiere left many unanswered questions about his final intentions. Various editors stepped in to provide answers, but their guesses have been criticized.

Take the familiar Choudens edition. Dialogue that was originally spoken was transformed into sung recitative in order to elevate the work to “grand” (or wholly sung) opera status.

It also changes the order of two of the acts (Giulietta and Antonia), interpolates music from other Offenbach scores and jettisons large chunks of this one.

One of the later editors who tried to return to an “authentic” original was German musicologist Fritz Oeser, who published a new edition in 1977. This is the edition Cole will sing in Costa Mesa. The Oeser version puts the acts in the correct order--Olympia, Antonia, Giulietta--and restores the spoken dialogue.

“I think it definitely makes sense to do it in that order,” Cole said over a recent lunch at a Costa Mesa restaurant.

“All the versions have Hoffmann say at the end, ‘Olympia . . . Antonia . . . Giulietta . . . . ‘ So I think that was always Offenbach’s intention. Besides, dramatically, it builds to that.”

While Cole had to learn some new music for this “Hoffmann,” the greater challenge was learning the dialogue.

“Speaking French is always a challenge, no matter how good your singing French is,” he said.

“All of a sudden, you have to bring your singing voice--which is relatively high--very quickly down to your normal speaking voice. You have to work on it to try to make it sound natural.”

The story presents Hoffmann as a grand Romantic poet, but one who keeps falling in love with the wrong woman.

“There’s a certain youthfulness and gullibility about Hoffmann,” Cole said. “He goes off on these tangents and just doesn’t think about tomorrow. As he says in the prologue, ‘Don’t worry, tomorrow we’re all going to be crying anyway. It’s going to be a mess.’ ”

Does the tenor feel any personal connection with the character?

“We all become involved with people that have not been the right person, for one reason or another,” Cole said. “And that’s what this is about.

“But I don’t want to say that I become Hoffmann. . . . I’m not a method actor. I just feel it. And when I feel it, it just comes out with the music, with the words, with the voice.”

Cole was born into an artistic family in Kansas City, Mo. He studied at the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri, then went to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with Margaret Harshaw, who remained his only teacher until her death two years ago.

He spent two summers as an apprentice at the Santa Fe Opera, but his career really began to take off after conductor Herbert von Karajan brought him to Salzburg in 1983 to sing and later record the Italian Singer in Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier.”

“Because of that, I also got to work with people like Solti, Giulini, Muti, Abbado, really fantastic conductors,” the tenor said.

Project Ended After Conductor’s Death

A final project with Karajan--Cole in the heavy dramatic role of Florestan in Beethoven’s “Fidelio”--came to a premature end after the conductor’s death in 1989.

“He wanted to do it with a voice that went from Mozart and Haydn to Beethoven, rather than from Wagner to Beethoven,” Cole said. “He really believed it should have been done that way.”

“After his death, I said I wouldn’t do it with anybody else because I knew that he would take care to make sure that the orchestra didn’t swamp me. That was very, very important.

“I don’t try to sound like anybody else or try to make a huge sound. I sing with the fullness that my voice has. That’s it.”

International opera house doors continued to open to him. But occasionally he has encountered prejudice; he is African-American.

“There have been incidents where my manager informed me that certain companies said, ‘We couldn’t have Vinson, a black male singer, singing with the lead soprano because of the romantic part of it.’ It was in this country.

“There are prejudices that you find in Europe too. The weird thing is that when you find them, they’re usually because of their conception of something. Like, they will say that Pamina [in Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’] is blond and blue-eyed. That’s just it.

“It has nothing necessarily to do because somebody is African-American or whatever. No, she’s got to be blond and blue-eyed.

“But opera is about fantasy. It’s not an art form where everything has to be realistic. If you have the voice for a particular part, you should be allowed to sing that part. It’s about singing. It’s about acting. It’s about the whole package. But it shouldn’t be about what color your skin happens to be.”

It is somewhat ironic that Cole, who sang Faust for Opera Pacific in 1993, has become so well known for singing French repertoire.

“French was my worst language when I was in college, and it’s turned out to be the language probably that I sing in the most,” he said. “I’ve sung more ‘Damnations of Faust’ in my life more than I’ve sung anything else. I’ve done 79 performances.

“I adore singing French. The style of writing is right for my voice. Massenet, Gounod, Bizet wrote differently than somebody like Verdi.

“Verdi, you go to a certain place--a lot is in your passaggio [the break between registers]--and you just kind of stay there. But with French music, you kind of go up and you go down, you’re not being asked to sustain high notes forever and ever and ever, or stay in one certain part of your voice.

“The whole voice is used, the whole coloration of it. It appeals to me a great deal. It just has a flair to it.”

* Vinson Cole will sing the title role of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” for Opera Pacific today, Thursday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Adam Klein takes over the role on Sunday at 2 p.m. $32 to $107. (714) 556-2787.

Chris Pasles can be reached at (714) 966-5602 or by e-mail at chris.pasles@latimes.com.