Director
John Schlesinger

Sets and designs
Maria Björnson
William Dudley

Performers
Hoffmann : Placido Domingo
Olympia : Luciana Serra
Giulietta : Agnes Baltsa
Antonia : Ileana Cotrubas
Coppélius : Geraint Evans
Dapertutto : Siegmund Nimsgern
Dr Miracle : Nicola Ghiuselev
Lindorf : Robert Lloyd
Nicklausse : Claire Powell
Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Georges Prêtre (conductor)

This ravishing and opulent production of Offenbach's opera comes from Covent Garden, when Placido Domingo excelled in the title role in Dec 1980 and Jan 1981.
The production - by film director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Bloody Sunday) - is also disturbing, however. Hoffmann, reminiscing about three tales of doomed love from his drunken isolation in a gloomy cellar bar, is portrayed as a strange, dark, paranoid drunk.

The opera is, essentially, three tales of the loves of a young poet (with Olympia, a mechanical doll; Giulietta, a courtesan; and the pure Antonia), a flashback sandwiched between a prologue and epilogue when Hoffmann, increasingly depressed and foiled by his evil rival Lindorf, finally forsakes love for his art. Based on a play of the same name that Offenbach may have seen in Paris, the opera has as its origin the Romantic fiction of ETA Hoffmann, a German writer popular in 19th-century Europe. Hoffmann died in 1822, at the age of 46, a victim of syphilis.

Thus, the prologue and epilogue are indeed set in a vaulted cellar, which makes full vertical use of the three-story Royal Opera stage. When the students rush in for their famous drinking chorus, Schlesinger's skill at moving crowds while retaining detail provides much for the eye while not distracting the ear. While Hoffmann's three loves and four nemeses are meant to be facets of the same conflicting figures, this pooduction casts them separately - a decision that caused much controversy at the time. Nevertheless, the singers were highly praised, particularly Domingo: "What other tenor of his stature reveals such scrupulous artistry, such dramatic perception, such unfailing musicality?", the Observer wrote.