“Sex and the dominant seventh are the two ingredients of opera,” claimed a wit in London’s Musical Times years ago. “What about Hansel and Gretel that has no sex and Wozzeck with no dominant sevenths?” responded an equally flippant reader.
Fast-forward to New York’s Metropolitan Opera and its staging of Puccini’s Tosca with Baron Scarpia attended and fondled by three naked women. Falla’s La Vida Breve, which Argentina’s La Nación claimed Freiburg Opera had turned into a “garbage dump”: Queen St’s Boobs on Bikes pales in comparison with the paper’s images of nudity in that production; Teatro Real de Madrid’s orgiastic Tannhäuser by Wagner; and Cologne Opera’s gruesomely desecrated Samson et Dalila by Saint-Saens, featuring scenes of simulated rapes and splashed blood.
Whither opera? Respect the original or cop out to sleaze? This dilemma also reflects the effete state of European opera. Conductor and composer Pierre Boulez called opera houses mausoleums, as they don’t attract postwar composers. Some see opera painting itself into a corner as a museum medium repeating the past for the fur-coat brigade. For good or bad motives, the eroticising of opera and the swapping of hymns for pop music in some churches have a common aim: to widen appeal and relevancy, especially for today’s young.
Sexual overtones in the libretto of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann invite eroticism. On this DVD, recorded at the Grand Théâtre de Genève last year, French director Olivier Py articulately explains this and his rationale for nudity, in which he is strongly backed by management and cast.
During the 20 minutes Patricia Petibon as submissive automaton Olympia sings her two coloratura arias (and she does so outstandingly well), she is totally naked, though the focus is soft, thanks to a transparent body stocking. The stately Venetian home of Giulietta, the sexually fun-loving courtesan, becomes a classy brothel in the first half of act three, the other major nude scene. Py mutes the impact of several prancing naked couples vaguely simulating sex by placing them at mid and rear stage behind two of the leads.
Other than a so-so Hoffmann, the solo and ensemble singing plus orchestra are tops. The fluid mobility of the sets is amazing: the sophisticated technology of these modules on a revolving stage conceals on-stage scene-shifters responding with such split-second timing they could be choreographed. Py’s fusion of subtle symbolism with reality makes this a challenging production for pensive aficionados already conversant with traditional versions such as Covent Garden’s Placido Domingo/Ileana Cotrubas DVD classic on Warner. That’s also ideal for those shunning eroticism altogether.