In Hoffmann’s short story, The Sandman, the young Nathanael is fooled by a travelling optician and falls in love with a doll before sinking into madness. In Offenbach’s opera, Hoffmann assumes the form of an accursed poet and recounts his torments in love. He never ceases to fall under the spell of manipulated women... In a masterly monologue, Lola Gruber gives voice to Coppelius and reveals his secret, he the sandman with multiple faces who conforms to the poet’s projections. Are not the characters in a book always the fruit of the author’s imagination? Lola Gruber breathes new life into the fantastic tale and probes the very essence of the alchemy of language.

Do as you please, Hoffmann ! Use me as you see fit. Give me the name of Coppelius for example. Make me into a buffoon, an evil genius, a windbag. Or better still, a swindler, a conman, a Jew. Pay yourself with words for that it seems is how you make a living. Invent ! After all, you’re the poet. Don’t worry, whatever name you give me, whatever face you make forme, it won’t change anything between us. I’ll be there. I always have been.

As for the rest, only reveal what suits us. Act as if I happened to be there by chance, reveal nothing about our long acquaintance. Present a different story for the eyes of the world. Never mind the eyes of the world, I hold them in my hand as well you know. It’s better to leave the world in its night. Concern yourself with their ears instead. Tell them what they want to hear : that one night, you fell in love with a clockwork doll and that everyone is still laughing about it.

Point out that it’s not your fault, but mine. Serve them up the white lie that a buffoon, by the name of Coppelius, sold you a pair glasses which made you take a sow’s ear for a silk purse, a doll for a passion. He warned you about those glasses, but you didn’t want to believe it when he said : “Each of these lenses has a soul which colours, transforms, and brings objects to life or makes them wither on the vine.” But alas, that tawdry lorgnette ended up broken like all the rest.

To rouse their sympathy, tell them a little more of your misfortune : explain how you confused the beating heart of a woman with a clockwork automaton; that her song was nothing more than a perforated card passing through a set of wheels, and that your pure love was deceived. Until the glasses I sold you finally fell from your eyes.

Conceal nothing of what follows—you will have to admit to making a fool of yourself. You will recount how the maws of the sycophants, still full of the victuals that had just been served them, gaped in the face of your imbecilic swooning for just as imbecilic a creature; a doll or worse, a robot of my making. (Stress the fact that it was I who made her eyes ; it is not amere detail). Confess, too, that the doll, Olympia, broke not as a heart breaks but as a mirror shatters : A fine layer of silver on glass— they say it brings bad luck... But what is that worth ? Not much.

Yes, they made fun of you. And then ? The laughter was lost amid the champagne bubbles,belches and hiccups: It was all nothing, until the migraine the next day. And of your tender inebriation, your galloping waltz, and your transports of joy, nothing remained except for that cast-off costume —as ragged and as empty as the discarded party glasses— that and the rumours, and the idle gossip, or as the Italians say, “un petegolezzo”.

Of course, it is painful to see one’s love reduced to that. But it is not too high a price to pay. By becoming their laughing-stock, you get away with a great deal. Between you and me,

there’s nothing to laugh about. Because the real robot is none other than yourself. Admit it.

Or whisper it, if you prefer. You know that other than me, no one listens to you.

No ? You clearly want to lose everything. Because, my dear poet, if you confess nothing, what will your poetry be worth ? Well, must I say it for you ? Since the beginning, it hasn't been you that acts but me. Finally acknowledge it, it’s high time. Like sand, so much time has passed,since that first night—you were so small and not yet a poet.

Turn back the hourglass and travel back to the first night and all the ones that followed. All the nights when, terrified, you waited for me. Terrified, and yet you waited. “Here comes the sandman”, your mother would say, and you would tremble. “Quickly, go to bed, children”, said your mother and your nanny, “Quickly, go to bed, he’s coming, he throws handfuls of sand in the eyes of children, then he puts them in a sack and carries them off to the moon to serve as food for his own little ones.” She was misinformed, your mother: I have neither descendants nor forbears. It is your eyes alone that I make sparkle. It is you who I feed, and you have always swallowed everything whole.

There were many things your mother didn’t know, but she did know how to fear. So, each night she warned you: “Beware the sandman, my son.” And each night, you waited for him, for me, who would ultimately arrive, drawn to the sleepless child, eyes wide open sitting on his bed, yet soon dazzled by a handful of sand. Everyone already knows that I first rip out the children’s eyeballs. I remove their bloody pupils from their heads—where do you think I got my wonderful collection of eyes from ? And when you closed your eyes again, you would still keep waiting for me until you fell asleep each night. The Sandman going to come, you thought ; and in your terror, you so feared me that you no longer knew whether you were chasing me away or calling me to you. The less you see me the more you imagine me, yet even in a dream, you never manage to grasp me. My face of sand flows away and dissipates until it becomes a vast lunar plain.

By virtue of not seeing me, you have given me many faces. I didn’t want them, but you gave them to me. The old lawyer with the bony, hirsute fists, that was me ; the peddler of second-hand barometers, that was me too. The eyeglass seller, me again; the Piedmontese mechanic, me as well. In the eyes of the world, I conform to what you write. What do the

eyes of the world matter to me, since I hold them in my hands. If you prefer, I could easily pose as the peddler of barometers, thermometers, and hygrometers. But it is only to indulge you that I don these costumes, wear these masks and act out these roles. I have absolutely no need to do so. A face appears and disappears like a fleeting reflection in a mirror. Just as eyes are hidden in the bedrooms of children. I thought you understood that.

Do you wish to win acclaim by supplementing the stories of your loves ? To tell what happened to you in Munich, in Venice, and what will happen to you again ? Do not mix in magic. You have made me an alchemist, but it’s not true. I do not change dust into gold. Ashes remain ashes and sand remains sand for all eternity.

Yes, it’s unfortunate, I can offer your momentum only the distance it can cover. So, a simple lorgnette is enough—you put it over your missing eye, and each time, you think you are discovering the moon, but you are just looking at the lens of the eyepiece which over time I have polished and perfected.

Because, from the start, I’ve had to do everything. The poet’s love needs an object, so eachtime, I take care of the bric-a-brac. I have made many discoveries : Giulietta in Venice, Antonia in Munich, Stella...I know how to pick the ones you need : asleep, motionless, two heavy eyelids tightly closed, a desert scattered over each one by my hand. Lunar surfaces which pine for their first explorer. It is that eternal landscape you gazed upon, once more without recognising it, before you exclaimed : Olympia !

In Venice, Munich or elsewhere, I alone choose them so that you believe you find them. A doll, a woman... for you, they basically are all alike. Your love is more blind than everyone else’s. But do you really miss those two little orbs I snatched from you in the night when you were a child ?

With Olympia as with all of them ; from Antonia before hand to Giulietta afterwards, you were completely in the dark. And once again, dear poet, on my signal, you got hot and bothered for a shadow; for an obscure doll. I purposely put her in your line of sight—pale as a blank canvas and yet indistinct, submissive, inert, and immobile. One glance through the window and that was enough for you. You serenaded that scrap-iron creature with the refrain “Let the flames of my passion flood you with the light of day”. All the same, what perspicacity from a man so bedazzled ! Deep down, you saw that there was nothing to see. Or rather, you did not sense, as animals would sense, any warmth emanating from the other side of that window. There was nothing alive except for the locus of your own ardour, your old expectations had become her own, behind a curtain, in the darkness.

Olympia, I only partially activated her. Behind those articulating eyelids, I placed two eyes. It was a nice addition, but it wasn’t enough. The poor doll couldn’t speak. And you, my poet, you know the value of words. You say I’m miserly, and miserly, no doubt I am. Miserly, and if the truth be known, circumspect. One word, I thought ; just one very small word would suffice—because, believe me, speech worried me a little. I feared the consequences. Put yourself in my shoes for once : the springs, the bolts and the cogs, all pass. But words are not made of the same metal. Words are more serious matters than vellum or turbines. They sink into stone and end up etched in the bark of trees. It only takes one. It starts with a word. Afterwards, it becomes flesh. Like all of us, you know the way it is. At least this poor thing,your chimera, your poetic chimera, could be satisfied with just one word, and you don’t have to be a poet to choose the right one. You pick the shortest, most definitive one, the initiator of everything... and for a lover the only one that matters. It was your rapture, it was your curse... and hers...Poor, wretched Olympia : All she could ever say was yes. “Yes”, and that was enough for you. That’s how you like it.

Do you want me to tell everyone ? Our doll is mounted on springs, but the automaton is you. You’re the one who follows and performs. Each time you fall in love, I’m the one who engineers it. I assure you, it’s much simpler than making a doll. You only ever found lovewhere I wanted you to. Puppet ! Impulsive lover ! Machine-like in your emotions, mechanical even in your passions. A single face for all your loves, my dear poet. I produce that face, you baptise it as you see fit : Antonia, Giulietta, Stella... You blind, stupid poet, it’s always the same face and I’m the one who makes the eyes. Like a treasure trove of marbles, I have hundreds in my pocket—agates, siberites, nuggets, all those eyes open in the night and still covered in a fine layer of sand. And I use them to make ever the same chimera with a woman's face, whom they sometimes say is dead or who was never alive.

And here you are now, imploring your great gods, your friend, or even your muse... But, my dear friend, your muse will never be as loyal to you as I am! Muses have other things to do. They meander, flit about, and, you can count on the fact there’s nothing they like more than making their absence felt. But you have me. Don’t listen to those who tell you never to give up the prey for the shadow—nothing in this world is more constant than the shadow that clings to us. All those childhood nights spent waiting for me, aren’t you now afraid that I might leave ? Have no fear, I’ll always be here. And I will faithfully perform my role night after night. Lover after lover. You will wait for me and I will come. Each night. You will not see me.

I will provide you with an object, and with your eyes closed, you will see me as the craftsmanof all things measurable: barometers, thermometers, hygrometers...And your love, how is it measured ? With whom? It’s so easy to predict. But we will play the game and together we will raise the heavy red theatre curtain. Always the same face... I promise, I will only ever change the eyes. Chinese, spider, siberites – Each time, I will make her again as new and as strange as she is familiar. And like every evening, after having put sand in your eyes, I will continue my watch. You will still love, I will take care of it, you will still wake up and I will take care of it. You will suffer again, and I will take the necessary measures. 

For the revival of The Tales of Hoffmann at Opéra Bastille, Octave went to meet Marie-Françoise Sombart, the head of supernumerary actors*. Here she reveals the different aspects of her work with the supernumeraries, which she carries out in collaboration with Gilles Maurige.

What does your job consist of?

I recruit the supernumeraries needed for each operatic production and look after them from their selection until they get paid. I look for supers according to the profiles required, I organise the auditions and manage all the human resources side of their engagement (administrative information, contracts, attendance records etc.).

I am in close contact with all the departments concerned, particularly stage management with whom I work on a daily basis – in rehearsal and during performances-, but also with the production team, costumes, hair and make-up, the dressers, salaries etc.

The casting of children is a special case. During the last few seasons, stage directors have used children a lot. Their recruitment is particular in terms of how we look for them but also because of the type of dossier with a very strict legal framework which has to be sent to a commission.

To manage all this, I am assisted by Gilles Maurige, stage manager who also works with the supernumerary department at Bastille.

Robert Carsen’s production of The Tales of Hoffmann has become one of the Paris Opera’s show-case productions. How many supers are there? Is this what we call a “big” production?

The Tales of Hoffmann was first performed in 2000. Twenty years ago already!... Off the top of my head, in terms of extras, the biggest production was Francesca Zambello’s War and Peace from the spring of 2005, with 90 supernumeraries, dancers, children etc. The Tales of Hoffmann uses a total of 54 supers. That’s still a big production in terms of numbers.

What qualities are required for this production in particular?

Robert Carsen wanted something very “dynamic” involving a lot of work on movement in the crowd scenes. It is for this reason that he asked Philippe Giraudeau to choreograph these scenes. It’s the same for the Chorus. But in these crowd scenes, each person must also play the role or roles they have been given. In this production, just for the supers, there are no fewer than thirty or so roles to play from start to finish, sometimes with very quick costume changes.

How were the auditions for Les Contes d’Hoffmann organised?

Robert Carsen, as is sometimes the case, wanted to re-audition in 2010, because of the television broadcast. The previous cast and the director’s specifications made it clear what kinds of profiles were required: a range of builds and ages and the ability to work in a group.

Since that second audition, the cast has evolved and changes have been made in the spirit required by the production. Often, indeed, the director does not return for the revival of his production so the work is carried out in close collaboration with the assistant directors.

Where do the supernumeraries come from? Is there a “pool” of them? Can anyone audition?

The supernumeraries who work at the Paris Opera are mainly show business professionals. They’re from theatre, dance or the circus. They’re trained and qualified in their field (theatre school, conservatoires, performing arts schools etc.) and are also freelance professionals.

We have a list that we add to every time a new artist is hired. In that sense, we can talk about a pool. We call upon them every time their profile corresponds to the requirements of the production. But we always try to integrate new artists who want to come and perform at a big opera house. In that case, we look at the CVs we have received and publicise the auditions in the various specialised establishments or, when we have very specific requirements, at employment agencies for the performing arts.

The auditions are closed. For organisational reasons for one thing: in the past there was an open casting call for which an endless queue of artists formed at 120 rue Lyon. We couldn’t see everybody because the director cannot spend the entire day on that. And also, for artistic reasons. The director asks for particular profiles and my role is to give him a selection of people that correspond to what he has asked for. My role as a filter is necessary to ensure the quality of the audition.

Has the work of the supernumerary department changed over the years?

I wouldn’t say that the work has changed. Our mission is always the same: finding the artist that corresponds to the role the director wants to develop on stage. And to permit that artist to do what s/he has been engaged to do under the best conditions.

New computer technology has made the job easier, allowing us to collate all the data on the artists we hire, thus to research according to profile and measurements. But one can assess the evolution of the supers in new productions.

The demands of stage directors are more exacting. Dmitri Tcherniakov, for example, has a very precise idea of the profiles he’s looking for. And since he’s been directing at the Paris Opera, it is not unusual to have to organise several auditions for the same production, until he’s found what he wants. And it’s very satisfying at the end to find it... at last!

Another requirement: that of finding the artists who will bring a “plus” to the production, without knowing what will make that “plus”! This was the case with Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski last season. He wanted a circus act without knowing exactly what kind or with whom. We therefore had to audition a lot of circus artists, whilst imagining their specialism and the effects that might best suit the wedding scene. And it was a hula hoop artist and somebody doing a balancing act with a baton who finally provided the effect we’d been looking for.

Finally, other kinds of profiles have emerged. Romeo Castellucci wanted to work on Moses and Aaron with handicapped artists. And there, it was a whole parallel system of organisation that had to be put in place in order to accommodate them. Dmitri Tcherniakov asked for the same thing last season for The Trojans but the autonomy of the people we hired, amputated but with prosthetic legs, made the arrangements simpler.

In both cases, it was the research that was very complicated and lengthy!

Octave gives free reins to some illustrators to portray their way the 19/20 Season, by revisiting one show poster of their choice. Matilde Gony illustrate the opera Les Contes d'Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach.

Who has never heard or even hummed the famous galop infernal from Orphée aux Enfers, the no-less-famous “Feu partout” from La Vie parisienne or those three bewitching notes from the exquisite Barcarolle in The Tales of Hoffmann? Those melodies, known to all, are part of humanity’s common heritage. They have even been engraved in platinum and sent out into space as ambassadors of our species to potential extra-terrestrial populations...

In addition to singing, our alien friends should also be able to dance. Was it not Offenbach who invented the French cancan in his Gaîté parisienne? Well, no actually! The gallop from Orphée aux enfers is not for a bunch of tricolour legs destined for the cabarets of the Butte Montmartre, it is a fiery, almost frenzied Bacchic dance. As for the Gaîté parisienne, only a few of the melodies in the work were actually drawn from Offenbach’s vast collection, because it was a ballet arranged by the conductor Manuel Rosenthal in… 1938.

Joyful music but a sad fate… It was Jean de La Bruyère who said that in France there is little esteem for people who like to have fun... Joyful music indeed, but a sad fate to be reduced to three hit tunes of which you are not necessarily the composer, especially when you have written over six hundred works including an ample harvest of masterpieces that are still unknown a century and a half later …

Over 130 stage works (a romantic grand opera, Die Rheinnixen, numerous comic operas, opéras bouffes, operettas, and stage music); a few oratorios and cantatas, but also concertos for his own instrument the cello (including a vast “military” concerto), numerous pages of symphonic music, sacred music, chamber music, dance music, melodies, and educational works... While the situation may have evolved over the last two decades, many of these works are still unpublished, or awaiting accurate, restorative editing. Smothered for many years under crude arrangements that fluctuated from the bombastic to the cursory, Offenbach’s work is finally beginning to regain its true dimension having been reconstructed to reflect its genuine musical and dramatic power. The primary aim of the on-going musicological works is to reveal the composer’s true face to the world again.  

So how does one describe Offenbach’s music? It is, in fact, the fruit of a vast culture and an early admiration for great masters like Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Weber. There is also the training from his tutor Fromental Halévy, who wrote the opera La Juive. Then there is his Rhenish and Jewish roots, and his own modern and entirely personal perspective. Verses of an ideal classicism and a “Mozartian” candour, scathing humour, romantic passion, inventive orchestration (created by himself and not some surrogate, as some persistent rumours maintain), skilful harmony… nothing seemed unfamiliar to him. The discourse itself is based upon a highly unique art of “natural contrast”, that is at once obvious and yet surprising; it blends buffoonery and melancholy, tenderness and provocation, discipline and brutality, character study and dance with a wholly unique proficiency.

His work method is now familiar to us: Firstly, Offenbach noted down the many melodies inspired by the libretto in large notebooks which he always carried with him - some barely legible drafts were even noted down on a table that he had installed in his carriage. It was also fairly common for him to write (musical or literary) annotations directly onto the manuscripts of his librettists. His correspondence with them reveals many secrets as to the way he guided his collaborators. That collaboration was always close and often to the point of becoming invasive and overbearing... He would then take a sheet of music paper intended for instrumentation. First he would note down the vocal lines in the centre, then, on the two lines below he would add a piano accompaniment. Sometimes it would be highly developed; at other times it would be limited. Finally, as soon as he was sure that the piece would be performed, he would begin the task of orchestrating it. To save time, he also used a codified system that, with a little experience, is easy to decipher. Throughout the rehearsals, he would modify or delete certain verses, or passages, and even entire numbers according to his own instincts as a dramatist or the demands of the Paris censorship bureau. We know that Offenbach’s method of orchestration bordered on genius because he was able to balance that task, receive his collaborators in his sitting room and talk with them about something completely different whilst his pen continued to fill the page with his famous scribbled, chicken-scratch handwriting.   

Offenbach used only sixteen musicians at his first venue, the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, but that was only for the first ten works which had their debut performance in the theatre between June and December 1855. It was a reduced “Mozart-like” orchestra. Offenbach would soon be able to take advantage of a larger orchestra pit (after he moved to the Passage Choiseul in December 1855) which could accommodate some thirty instrumentalists. Generally, there are two major types of orchestration for Offenbach’s theatrical works. The first is described above and was used for almost all the works performed in France prior to 1874—together with a few subsequent pieces. Even so, the composer knew how to adapt to the means that different theatres offered him and he did not hesitate to expand his orchestra if he had the opportunity to do so. For more substantial works, like those composed for the Opéra-Comique, the ballets, and more particularly, the extravaganzas and other grand performances staged at the Théâtre de la Gaîté after 1874, Offenbach increased the size of the orchestra. He also did the same for the Viennese versions of most of his works. Did he not once declare that: “I write my music for Paris, but I hear it played in Vienna”?

To continue to claim that Offenbach only produced a single opera seria, The Tales of Hoffmann, at the end of his life as if to apologise for simply being the Second-Empire’s jester and entertainer is both the product of legend and calumny. To believe as much is to ignore Les Fées du Rhin, La Haine (the Victorien Sardou play for which he wrote the music), and Fantasio, not to mention other masterpieces that could not be any more serious. It is also to ignore everything that is scathingly funny in La Belle Hélène, deeply moving in La Périchole, and satirically cruel in La Grande-Duchesse… The legend persists but time marches on. A far more complex, unpredictable Offenbach than the one who amused our forebears is now making a major comeback and nothing seems to be able to stop him, much to the delight of us all.

Jean-Christophe Keck

Jean-Christophe Keck has overseen the monumental Offenbach Edition Keck (OEK Boosey & Hawkes) since 1999 and is regarded as the leading musicologist and specialist on the composer. As a conductor, he has performed and recorded numerous works. A producer at France Musique, he is currently the musical director of the Orchestre de Chambre des Hautes-Alpes, and the Châteaux de Bruniquel Opera Festival. The Festival de Radio France et Montpellier has debuted several of his edited works including Les Fées du Rhin (2003), La Haine (2009), and Fantasio (2015) for which he was also musical advisor.