Time for a final fling with opera before we plunge into Advent and my annual Advent Calendar for the next few weeks!\u00a0 Today’s aria is a favourite of mine, because you can do so much with it, and because it contains so much potential for humour, pathos, and creepiness.\u00a0 This version contains all three of those aspects…<\/p>\n
[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=InAxtPyZVKI&w=420&h=315]<\/p>\n
The Doll Aria comes from Offenbach’s rather strange and disturbing opera Les Contes D’Hoffmann<\/em>, in which the protagonist keeps meeting and falling in love with the same woman in different incarnations – first she is a clockwork doll, later a girl who will die if she ever sings, and finally a courtesan who plans to steal his reflection.\u00a0 Strange to say, none of these love affairs end well – in every case, the woman’s guardian, parent or keeper plays a rather sinister role – and our coloratura soprano gets not one, but three death scenes, thus creating a new record in the ‘soprano falls and love, then dies’ school of opera.<\/p>\n Les Oiseaux Dans La Charmille is the aria sung by Olympia, the clockwork doll, prompting Hoffmann to fall in love with her.\u00a0 The words are very simple, and don’t have much relevance to the opera, but here they are anyway, in French and English:<\/p>\n