Word: hoffmann
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Harvard's Stanley Hoffmann, a leading student of strategic affairs, noted last week in Washington that in every modern presidency, there has been a swing one way they another. The men who at first emphasized arms control found they had to pay more attention to armament. Those who came to power preoccupied with beefing up America's defense had to make room in their thinking for arms control...
Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann returns the Met to top form...
...phantasmagorical spirit of E.T.A. Hoffmann lurks everywhere in the Metropolitan Opera's brilliant new production of Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann), which opened last week. Vividly directed by Otto Schenk and imaginatively designed by Günther Schneider-Siemssen, Hoffmann is the Met's most successful, satisfying effort in months. It is all the more welcome because the season, still somewhat colored by 1980's labor disputes, began in a lackluster fashion. Soprano Renata Scotto was booed in her opening-night performance of Norma, and a Ring semicycle...
...Hoffmann is best seen as the progression of a soul. There is the comic slapstick of Act I, in which the eponymous poet falls in love with Olympia, a mechanical doll. Next there is the sobering disappointment of Act II, in which the hero falls in love with a faithless Venetian courtesan. Finally, there is the tragic catharsis of Act III, in which Hoffmann's sincere love for the simple, shy singer Antonia is destroyed by the vicious machinations of the evil Dr. Miracle. Each affair should appear to be more intense than the last...
...production illustrates the progression perfectly. The first act-all bright colors and gaily spinning contraptions-is an extended divertissement, with Hoffmann the butt of a joke shared by everyone except him. Olympia, the crowning achievement of Spalanzani's workshop, is obviously a machine, and in a fine, broad comic touch, Director Schenk has the inventor's assistant twist each of her fingers to produce the dazzling coloratura of her famous Doll's Song. The mood turns passionate when Hoffmann meets the sensuous Giulietta, and Schneider-Siemssen's Venice creates an atmosphere of dark mystery, with shadowy...