Review Roundup: LA Opera's TALES OF HOFFMANN

L.A. Opera presented TALES OF HOFFMANN, now playing through April 15th.

The sensational Vittorio Grigolo returns to LA Opera as poet E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose boozy recollections of the women he has loved and lost set the plot in motion. The cast also features Kate Aldrich, Kate Lindsey and superstar Diana Damrau in her company debut. Marta Domingo's staging captures the half-remembered, half-fantasy dreamworld of Offenbach's final masterpiece.

Let's see what the critics had to say:

Mark Swed, LA Times: When Plácido Domingo walked on stage before conducting Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffmann" at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Saturday night, he got what he always gets: an excited ovation.

Who's not happy to see the world's most beloved opera star? But as the audience quickly realized, it's never good news to see the general director of an opera company - as Domingo is of Los Angeles Opera - before a performance.

He was there to report that the evening's bass-baritone, Nicolas Testé, was not able to sing because of a throat problem, and it had been impossible to find a replacement on short notice. The best the company could come up with was singer Wayne Tigges, who would sing the roles of the opera's four villains in orchestra pit, while Testé acted, lip-syncing, on stage.

Jim Farber, LA Daily News: As they say, the show must go on. And from that point it did, in rather triumphant style perhaps buoyed on a wave of pure adrenalin. The Tigges/Testé solution proved reasonably convincing when body and voice were in close proximity. It was less effective when Tigges' singing came from one side of the stage while his physical manifestation was on the other. Neither man could have been very happy about the situation, but they made the best of it.

Ilana Walder-Biesan, Bachtrack: I am happy to report that none of these substitutions seem to have hurt the musical quality of the show. Damrau chose her heroine well, singing Antonia with melting softness and spinning lines of sound. It would have been exciting - both musically and as a feat of athleticism - to hear her sing Olympia and Giulietta as well, but it also would have been a shame to miss So Young Park's and Kate Aldrich's voices in the roles. Physically, Park was a very mechanical doll, and the precision of her voice matched that of her movements. Every note of the role's difficult coloratura was spot on, every trill even, and every pianissimo section restrained but resonant. If her voice lost carrying power at the bottom, who cares when it sparkled so at the top? Mezzo Kate Aldrich's Giulietta was a different kind of treat: big-voiced and sultry. She refused to be overpowered by Vittorio Grigolò, matching him in force and tone during their act II duet.

Patrick Mack, Parterre: At the scene's close, in a stunning coup de theatre, the contained tavern set drew back into the unknown depths of the Dorothy Chandler stage as the toy maker's workshop was revealed in the front. Spalanzani, the absurdly funny Rodell Rosel, was joined and his assistant Cochenille, also played as an automaton, the exceedingly able Christophe Mortagne.

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