Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Romantic author ETA Hoffmann’s tales perform poorly on the Bechdel test — you might think. The protagonist, a poet with a drinking problem, reels off accounts of four women he has loved, each objectified in a different manner.But for this year’s Salzburg Festival, director Mariame Clément has reimagined the opera from the women’s perspective. Her Hoffmann (Benjamin Bernheim, fresh from the Olympic closing ceremony) is styled as an endearing Wes Anderson character, a movie director stuck in the 1960s and haunted by his own dreams. We meet him living with a shopping trolley outside a Hollywood film studio; Luther’s tavern is the catering corner, populated by costumed supernumeraries from a range of different movies — Roman sentries, cowboys, baroque aristocrats, aliens. Hoffmann sings his “Kleinzach” narrative with a projected storyboard.Rather than being a wind-up doll, Olympia is Jane Fonda in a joint-fuelled filming session for Barbarella. Antonia is the romantic star of a costume drama that nods both to The Fall of the House of Usher and Nosferatu. And the courtesan Giulietta is merely a figment of Hoffmann’s fever-dream about his own failures (Birdman).Though none of these devices — a film-within-a-film, it-was-all-a-dream, a sea of cinematic references — are new, Clément juggles them with such confidence and skill, with so much thought, wit, and attention to detail, that we are swept along in the tide. In Kathryn Lewek, who sings all of Hoffmann’s women, Clément has found an ideal protagonist — strong, charismatic and with both secure coloratura of bell-like purity and a warm, seductive lower range. This doll is nobody’s plaything; this woman is an artist on the hunt for equality.Bernheim has boy-next-door charm, an easy physical assurance coupled with a lyrical tenor voice. He acts the hell out of his dissolute, tormented role. Kate Lindsey lends a gamine, gender-fluid charm to the part of Muse/Nicklausse, climbing out of a garbage bin as the piece begins (a nod to Beckett, no doubt), playing the dutiful offsider until her magnificent barcarolle duet in “Venice” — a moment in which Clément hands over authorial power to the women and lets them pen their own screenplay at the catering table. Christian Van Horn, at one point equipped with actual horns, takes to the roles of baritone baddie (Lindorf/Coppélius/Dr Miracle/Dapertutto) with relish.That Marc Minkowski brings a passion for Offenbach’s final stage work is evident, and he animates the Vienna Philharmonic to fleet, lively tempi. But there is not enough trust between musicians and conductor; you can hear, from the messiness of one-note interjections and from the length of time it takes everyone to pull back together whenever the ensemble falls apart, that the players have no confidence in this downbeat. And yet, for all its disorder, this is a performance that leaves you believing in Offenbach. And that is to Minkowski’s credit.Salzburg’s new production raises a difficult opera to a new level of cohesion for our times. And it’s a fun ride.★★★★☆To August 30, salzburgerfestspiele.at
