Word: capobianco
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...enable Sills to complete her long-planned and justly famed Donizetti trilogy. As with the other queens of the Tudor era, Elizabeth I in Roberto Devereux and the Queen of Scots in Maria Stuarda, Sills proves again that she is a singing actress without peer. Stage Director Tito Capobianco gives her full rein: she even takes final leave of her lord and mate Henry VIII by giving him a stinging slap in the face that is a triumph of histrionics over history...
...shimmering new Hoffmann that Director Tito Capobianco has conceived and staged for the New York City Opera, it is neither the tenor nor the soprano who steals the show. Instead it is the bass, who plays the four incarnations of the devil. No surprise, since the roles are sung by that master of operatic guises and disguises Norman Treigle. By design, and also by the sheer magic of Treigle's acting, this Hoffmann is a black comedy that belongs-curly locks, shtik and fiddle-to the devil...
...Capobianco has accomplished this first of all with some visual (but never spoken) additions to the plot that enable not just Lindorf but Coppelius, Dappertutto and Dr. Miracle as well -all played by Treigle-to win the girls that Hoffmann loses. The first act, for example, usually ends with Coppelius seeming to dismantle the doll Olympia before Hoffmann's horrified eyes. He does so in the new production, but then Coppelius and a happy flesh-and-blood Olympia (Soprano Beverly Sills) are seen embracing behind a curtain. Obviously the girl is part poltergeist, too, and in league with Lucifer...
...most obvious alteration in Capobianco's new production is the elimination of the brief epilogue in which Hoffmann is found in a drunken stupor, overwhelmed by his failures. Instead, the final curtain goes to the triumphant Dr. Miracle, who has just caused the poor Antonia to sing herself to death. In one of the chanciest bits of operatic stagecraft seen in New York in years, Dr. Miracle miraculously pops up on the outer rail of the orchestra pit, towers spectacularly over the conductor, and laughs his final laugh of evil victory...
...Director Capobianco's inventions are infinitely more than acceptable for the oldest reason known to show business: they work. Given the incomparable team of Treigle and Sills, he has the added advantage of dealing from strength. Sills is in superb voice and thespian mien, as usual. She somehow manages, for instance, to make the viewer simultaneously amused by and sorry for the doll Olympia. Wind her up, and oh, how she warbles-even standing on one foot. Take her hand too passionately, and oh, how she runs away...