The Tales of Hoffmann, Royal Opera review - three-headed monster feels baggier than ever

Having all but sunk one seemingly unassailable opéra comique, Bizet’s Carmen, director Damiano Michieletto goes some way to helping out another with so many problems. Not far enough, alas, but the chosen edition, with its reams of recitative (mostly not by Offenbach), doesn’t help. Nor does the theme of women as either dolls, angels or devils. The real Hoffmann did it all so much better.

Never mind: this is where we are, so how well are the tales of the poet’s three loves and the frame in which a fourth battles it out with a demon and a muse sung, played and directed? There are some potentially great performances here, but they’re mostly ill served by Michieletto doing his familiar obfuscation job. Worst, he gets in the way of the pathos and hearbreak soprano Ermonela Jaho can supply in spades as the one true love, ailing Antonia. It’s a bizarre choice to turn her from a consumptive fledgling diva who if she sings too much will die to a former dancer having followed in her ballerina mother’s footsteps until illness consigned her to crutches and a wheelchair (Jaho pictured below with Alex Esposito's Doctor Miracle). Why would Hoffmann be puzzled by her father’s removing her from his tender attentions? Answer: the unwanted suitor made her sing, which will kill her, but papa Krespel hasn’t let on about that. Whereas there's no disguising the fatal disability here. How much stumbling and collapsing does Jaho have to do? What can be an affecting act may look pretty at times; Paolo Fantin's sets, Carla Teti'a costumes and Alessandro Carletti's lighting always deliver. But the telling of the tale falters at every point. True, there's not much to be done with the annoying servant Frantz (Christophe Mortagne, overacting in all his roles), so ir'a fair enough to turn him in to a ballet master mocked by some rather scary little girls in tutus. The rest is questionable. I suspect those seated high up couldn’t see Antonia as she sings her aria from her bed inside one of several high-up recesses, but from the stalls we couldn’t hear her well either. Juan Diego Flórez is overparted as Hoffmann, and as an actor nowhere close to Domingo in the classic Schlesinger Royal Opera production; he shows off far too often his ringing top notes - many uncalled for - but the steely-bright tenor needs more weight, above all to carry against two basses (Alex Esposito and Alastair Miles) in the dramatically otiose male trio. The second and climactic of the trios gets overcluttered with dancers, and doesn’t explain why Antonia dies.

That’s a shame, because a lot of Michieletto’s busy-ness works, especially in the Prologue with the spirits of wine, the green-wigged muse (Christine Rice, who would have made a good Nicklausse, but Julie Boulianne is excellent, unusually opulent in the role), devils flanking the first of the four villains played to the hilt by the reverberating Alex Esposito, the drinking crowd all working overtime to paper over the cracks. The first “love”, mechanical doll Olympia, gets moved from a salon where she’s the object of admiring society to a schoolroom with Hoffmann in short trousers and lots of mathematics. Again, it’s visually strong, but not logical (OK, so it’s meant to be fantastical). Olga Pudova (pictured above with the chorus) pips out all the high notes as written and much more, but not with quite as much panache as the best coloratura I’ve seen in ages, Sharleen Joynt singing Donizetti and Bernstein in Wexford.

The Giulietta act is a mess, as always, though it does contain the best of duets, where Flórez attains bright ardour. His shadow-snatcher courtesan is Marina Costa-Jackson (pictured below on the right in the Act Three ensemble), strutting like a Hollywood film star in a not especially Venetian casino and forceful in projection, though it’s hard to believe she’s been singing Puccini’s Lauretta and Suor Angelica; this is surely more a mezzo who’d make a strong Azucena and Eboli. Pacing is erratic: Antonello Manacorda gets the orchestra to sparkle and thrust in the livelier numbers, but needs to keep the more sentimental stuff on the move. There’s not much he can do about the epilogue: the currently-favoured ending, an ensemble led by the muse, is weak music. Isn’t there room for a 90-minute Hoffmann, cutting second verses of those endless couplets and replacing recits with minimal spoken dialogue? And why won’t the Royal Opera dare to stage a much better Hoffmann-based opera, Hindemith’s Cardillac? Simple answer: box office. This certainly pleased the crowds, but left me cold and weary.

• The Tales of Hoffmann at the Royal Opera until 1 December
• More opera reviews on theartsdesk