Chess Colle Zukertort

Quick-Start Guide to the Colle Zukertort, a Chess Opening System for Players of Any Strength

• Zukertort
 
• | Jun 18, 2009
 
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I've noticed there are fewer resources available to those who want to learn about the Colle-Zukertort, a solid, positional chess opening system for White. Thus, I thought I’d make a quick-start guide for anyone who wants to try it out sometime. This opening strategy is ideal for people who do not want to lose a game on move 8 because their memory failed them while, at the same time, allowing White to gain a significant advantage if Black missteps.

Before getting started, I want to point out that the C-Z is not a single opening solution you should lazily play against everything the rest of your life. You can play it against pretty much anything and not come out worse, but eventually you need to learn how to deal with pet defenses Black can throw your way. In the end you might play the C-Z itself maybe 1/3 of the time. The good news is that you don’t have to learn the special solutions to pet defenses all at one time. You can learn the mainline of the Zukertort in literally 15 minutes and safely play it against practically anything, but then to get the most out of the opening you should sew it into a larger chess repertoire.

Luckily, there are books that show these solutions to help you do that.

Okay, let’s get started. The basic structure of the Zukertort variation is shown below. I have shown all of White’s men, but only the pawn structure and castled King of Black.

Basic Setup of Colle Zukertort chess opening

He has options as to where he puts his pieces, but the above pawn skeleton is more or less forced. You might ask why. The answer comes down to the e5 square. White has three men hitting that square, so Black has a hard time pushing his e-pawn past e6. Thus, Black typically will fianchetto his Q-Bishop to b7 (playing Bd7 ends up causing a lot of problems for Black in general, see my video on the Zukertort on this page.)

The pawn on a3 may seem curious. That pawn is principally designed to keep a Knight off b4, where it would hit your Bishop on d3. If Black develops his Q-Knight to d7 instead of f6, there is little danger of his and White generally would not play a3.

If Black instead plays his Q-Bishop out to f5 or g4 before pushing his e-pawn to e6, things typically become rather sharp, but as I mentioned earlier White can still safely play the C-Z setup, it just is not optimal — More of a comfortable option until you find time to learn the structures and themes of those lines.

If Black fianchettoes his K-Bishop by playing …g6 and then …Bg7, then White will generally want to play something other than the Colle System. There are various solutions given for this. I’ve published a special pet line on the Colle System Players Forum but you can also play the 150 attack or Barry attack. However, you can still play the Colle System without feeling like you are already behind. If you do, I would recommend playing your Bishop to e2 instead of d3 and either playing for Q-side space or castling Q-side and throwing your K-side pawns up the board. (Note this latter option is purely a practical-play consideration. Do not consider it a solid repertoire solution if you are playing an important game with someone about 1700 elo.)

Black typically pushes his c-pawn to c5 in all Q-pawn games, and in the C-Z it is particularly important because the Q-side is generally the only place he will get any hope of play. That explains the skeleton I showed above.

What typically occurs is that Black exchanges on d4 to open the c-file and White puts his Knight on e5 and supports it with f4, leading to the setup shown below.

Zukertort Variation after exchange on d4 and White has established and supported a Knight on e5

From here White will launch a K-side attack with moves like Rf3-h3, Nbf3, g4, Qf3,Qg4, or Qh5. Note how the central pawn mass is pretty stable. Since White has not played c4, there are no exchanges or advances that can be done to dissolve the blockade. This means that Black has a hard time attacking White’s King while White has plenty of space to get to Black’s.

Black also has a difficult time defending his King because his space is all on the Q-side. He can have problems transferring his pieces because there is a bit of a bottle-neck in the center of his position.

Now that you have seen the basic setup and strategy of the opening, let’s play the moves in a typical sequence to see how this setup generally comes about.

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.e3

This is the move signally that White is playing the Colle System. White is declining to push his c-pawn and instead opening up his King’s Bishop.

3…e6

This was Black’s last significant chance to deviate. Once he has followed suit, deciding his Q-Bishop is going to stay on his Q-side, there are far fewer ways for him to mix things up.

4.Bd3 c5

Now that Black has opened up his K-Bishop, this pawn is supported. In truth he could have played it on move 3 or even move 2, but obviously those plays would require him to have a bit more confidence in understanding the outcome since the pawn has no immediate defense.

5.b3

This signals that White is playing the Zukertort variation of the Colle System rather than the Koltanowski version.  The point of this move is to stop …c4 which would harry the Bishop on d3. In truth, White does not need to play this immediately, but for ease of repertoire study, I recommend playing b3 now so you don’t have to know what to do after 5.O-O c4.

The Zukertort is named after Johannes Zukertort, who played William Steinitz in the first World Chess Championship. The Koltanowski is named after George Koltanowski who championed the c3-version of the Colle for over half a century. In the Koltanowski version, White plays 5.c3 instead, so that if Black plays 5…c4?!, White can just play 6.Bc2, and his Bishop is still on a good square.

5…Nc6

Black could play some other move or even play his Knight to d7 instead, but this is the most common play.

6.O-O Bd6

This is the most testing play. It might seem that 6…b6 is smarter since the Bishop is going to go to b7 anyway. Thinking about it that way makes …Bd6 seem overly committal. The issue is that once Black spends a move on …b6, it is very hard for him to mix things up in the center. It more or less allows White to complete his intended setup without any tactical concerns.

7.Bb2

This stops ...e5

7...O-O

Arriving at a crucial position below:

From here White typically plays 8.Nbd2, but Black has a tricky way of dealing with that move. I originally suggested 8.Ne5 here, leading to a very interesting attack after 8…cxd4 9.exd4 Qc7 10.f4 Nb4 11.Rf3!??!, allowing Black to take White’s prized Bishop on d3. After 11…Nxd3 12.Qxd3, White has the threat of Rh3 followed by Ng4!

White has allowed Black to take his prize Bishop, but has a great K-side attack for it.

However, as much as I love that attack, it is not impossible to defend against. If White wants to get the absolute greatest advantage (as I showed in a chessville article), he needs to play 8.dxc5! here. However, that requires White to have a good grasp of many different kinds of positions.

8.a3 is fine here, and better than people think. If you are a quiet player willing to get a comfortable position where your opponent has to know exactly what to do even to get equality, then it is the move for you. We’ll go with that one for purposes of our mainline.

8.a3 b6

Black has done very well in practice here by playing …Qe7, but that is mostly because no one has realized the proper way of stopping …e5 is not to play Ne5 but rather 9.dxc5!, after which White has essentially placed Black in a bad QID.

9.Nbd2

This stops ...Ne4

9...Bb7 10.Ne5

And now White can comfortable launch a K-side initiative. I have placed a board with the first moves in it below so you can play through them.

1. d4Nf62. Nf3d53. e3e64. Bd3c55. b3Nc66. O-OBd67. Bb2O-O8. a3b69. Nbd2Bb710. Ne5

–X

f

J#,.@

Zukertort Wisdom

Some general guidelines for playing the C-Z:

1. Never allow Black to place anything on a3, f4, or e5.

2. Don't allow Black to place anything but a pawn on d5 or c5.

3. Often, Black retreats his Knight from f6 to dislodge your Knight on e5. That is often the critical time to attack.

4. Keep a pawn on d4 unless you are beginning, or have already begun, your attack on his King. (Stronger players who know what they are doing after dxc5 can ignore this.)

5.If your opponent dilly-dallies, just continue to train more men on his King. Do not attack too early.

6. If Black moves his K-side pawns or transfers a Knight to g6, use a pawn or two to help your pieces attack him. Otherwise you can probably attack with just your pieces.

More downloads and information can be found on the Zukertort download page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dorwTb_J1uc

OCTOBER 21, 2010

Ghosts Review

Henrik Ibsen’s play Ghosts was recently produced at a local play house and although I enjoyed the entire production, I felt there was one actor who stood out among the others. Kent Johnson’s portrayal of Jacob Engstrand was either a great performance with solid depth, or I’m just babbling on about a shoddy performance.

The set has a white sheet pulled from the back of the stage to the front, serving as both background and flooring. The furniture, a couch with a coffee table, a small wooden chair and table, a chandelier, are antiques. The couch is an elegant white with some yellow stitching trim, no doubt to resemble gold. The chandelier is hung low, about a foot off of the floor, which is odd but serves as an object to walk around, keeping others at a distance. The chandelier also is representative of the “upper class” mentality everyone tries to portray at one point or another but by displaying the chandelier so low shows the audience that these “elites” are no higher than us.

     Kent Johnson either does a wonderful job of portraying Jacob Engstrand under terrific directing by John Johnston, or they completely missed a great opportunity at showing the lengths Engstrand would go to in order to deceive everyone. Engstrand has a long standing leg injury from falling down a set of stairs at a bar when attempting to “convert” the patrons. Regina even mentions how she is tired of hearing about his leg, “Ugh–! And that leg too!” Yet the only time Johnson sits down is at the beginning of the play when it’s just Engstrand and Regina and Johnson chooses to sit on the regal white couch over the wooden chair. Rest of the play, Johnson is standing and walking around. Even Johnson’s walk is indicative of Engstrand sandbagging his injury. A man with a leg pain bad enough to warrant a can would always strike the ground with the cane first, then his foot. Johnston put his cane down first early in the play but discontinued as the play progressed.

The funniest of Engstrand’s lies is his inept ability to keep hold of his hat when in the presence of Phillip Leahl’s Pastor Manders. Johnston would “accidently” drop his hat near the Pastor’s feet and glance at Leahl expectantly, waiting for eye-contact before making a feeble attempt to reach for it.

     When we first meet Engstrand, Johnson is wearing a dirty white shirt and patchy pants, black shoes with his injured leg having a small wooden black tied to its foot, and a black bowler-hat. Later, Engstrand first comes to see Pastor Manders, Johnson is wearing the same cloths as earlier but now he has donned a gray vest and his hair has been wetted and combed. Engstrand is a poor carpenter. Engstrand probably spends a lot of money being “out on the loose.”

Being that Engstrand is crippled, even slightly, his work must suffer making him a less than valuable worker. It is little wonder then that Engstrand’s clothes be dirty and patchy. Still Engstrand’s shirt was once white, when he agreed to keep his wife’s secret to himself; he was doing well for her and her daughter’s benefit. But Engstrand’s wretchedness has tainted his white shirt, not enough to blacken it, but enough to dirty it.

     Engstrand never shows any true emotion. Any point that you might expect an emotion to appear, you enter wondering what is his motive or angle. The pain in his leg looks over dramatized, which is well within character, and his attempts at seeming humble and devote are laughable. Even when Engstrand has won his way with Pastor Manders and you know he must be happy. But Engstrand must not appear to be too happy so Pastor Manders will continue to be Enstrand’s every beck and call.

    Johnston portrays Engstrand exactly as I imagined while reading with one exception. Johnston is quite obviously a tall man, possibly 6′ 5″, maybe taller. Even hunched over and slouching as much as possible, Johnston still towers over the rest of the cast. I had pictured Engstrand as being about 5′ 7″ or 5′ 8″, rough stubble around his face, and an accent that sounds vaguely like a pirate. I guessed that at one time or another in his youth he might have been a sailor since the only town any speaks of is obviously a port town and Ibsen grew up in a port town. Johnston nailed each expected aspect, though the accent wasn’t exactly pirate-like, I felt like he did have a sailor’s air about him.

    I really enjoyed watching the play far more than reading it. Seeing the characters come to life, I could read into each personality better than just the black and white of paper. Seeing Leahl’s reaction to every temptation was hilarious and really helped to keep the audience engage in between character changes such as when Regina went to get Mrs. Alving.

    I suppose most of all; I enjoyed watching the end of the play with my wife who had a fascinating take on the medical basis of the play with historical perspective. The suddenness of Oswalt’s catatonic condition is not indicative of syphilis as we now know it. Historically, many people thought to have died of neurosyphilis actually suffered from schizophrenia. Patients who have been diagnosed as schizophrenic are categorized into five types. The two most likely portrayed are: residual, they hear voices in their head but at a low intensity, and catatonic, they are unable to talk or can only manage to repeat one or two words. Both the bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia are hereditary. It is my wife’s belief that Oswalt suffered from a bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia passed down from his father. Given that Mrs. Alving complained of hearing ghosts, I believe Mrs. Alving suffers from a positive reaction to schizophrenia and Mr. Alving suffered from bi-polar disorder which resulted in mood swings, drinking, and fornicating. Oswalt received both while his half-sister may not have received either.

https://myharrison.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/ghosts-review/

Joyce: Ibsen Ghosts

All Life Was Grist For The Artist

By STEPHEN SPENDER

JAMES JOYCE By Richard Ellmann.

tanislaus Joyce, who bore throughout his life, like an enormous load, all the fame and most of the cares of his more famous brother, once made an entry in the diary he kept as a record of James Joyce's unfolding genius: "Jim is thought to be very frank about himself but his style is such that it might be contended that he confesses in a foreign language- an easier confession than in the vulgar tongue."
This immensely detailed, massive, completely detached and objective, yet loving biography translates James Joyce's books back into his life. One closes it with the impression that everything every friend of his or that he himself said or did, every detail of his family life, became verbalized and stored away in his mind as material he might put into his books. "Ulysses" was selected from sacks of notes of things that might go in. Every detail had to be recorded with what may seem obsessive accuracy. When writing "Ulysses" James Joyce would write to members of his family in Dublin to check on the exact position of a house or some trees in a street.
Reading this book one often has the curious sense of participating in a process of metamorphosis or transubstantiation. His friends and family change into looming phrases in his mind to reappear in his books. But one also has the uncanny impression that the process might be reversed and that his phrases might change back into the people from whom they derive.
Sometimes his own life seems to get completely mixed up with his fiction as though he were living out his own character in his novel (who is also writing the novel). The famous story "The Dead," in which a husband discovers that his wife, before she met him, was loved by a young man who subsequently died, and who- the husband feels- loved her with an intensity that he can never rival, is partly autobiographical. Nora Joyce did have a youthful admirer who died early, before she met Joyce; Joyce once went and visited this boy's grave.
It is difficult to read of the way in which Joyce questioned his wife about her former admirers, or to read the letters he wrote to her on the few occasions when they were separated, without having a sense of something odder than self-dramatization, more compulsive than a writer collecting his material. It is as though Joyce were trying to push his way into an imagined reality, more real than the real, which belonged to the transcendent world of his art- a world that was entirely made up of his imagining and imagined self. And this is what "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake" are. They are whole worlds into which everyone and everything Joyce knew has changed into Joyce himself, and yet they continue to retain the very real quality of his literal-mindedness.
This of course is magic, a fact of which Joyce, fanatically superstitious, was aware. His friends, too, felt the frightening quality of his transforming gift. It is scarcely too much to say that Oliver St. John Gogarty- with whom he had quarreled- was terrified of what sort of figure Joyce would make, of him as Black Mulligan, set wandering through Dublin's Night-town. Others canvassed to have their names or anecdotes about them fossilized in the limestone of "Finnegans Wake," a request Joyce understood and often acceded to.
Mr. Ellmann notes that "Joyce's first interior monologue was inserted at the end of 'A Portrait of the Artist,' where, however, he makes it seem less extraordinary by having Stephen write it in a journal. It had a dramatic justification there in that Stephen could no longer communicate with anyone in Ireland but himself." What is true of Stephen is likely to have been even more true of Joyce, the self-appointed, self-chosen exile. There is much evidence in this book that although Joyce was a fanatical observer of other people's idiosyncrasies, his contact with them was either far apart or extreme opposite of this complete identification. An almost incredible example of his power of identification was with James Stevens, his relations with whom have the bewitched quality of Titania's relations with Bottom the Weaver when she was under the love-spell.
For Joyce the drug that led him into a trance was the obsessive fascination of coincidence and verbal play: Stevens and he both had the same first name- James; Stevens' second name was the one Joyce had chosen as first name for Stephen Dedalus; they were both born in Dublin on Feb. 2, 1882. The identification led him so far that he was seized with the fantastic idea that, if he were badly ill, or to die, James Stevens, his absolute alter ego, could complete "Finnegans Wake."
There is a photograph of Joyce in this book with Stephens and with another of his identities or self-projections, John Sullivan, the singer. Joyce himself was a tenor; Sullivan was Irish, an exile, persecuted. That was enough. Joyce projected on to Sullivan all the tortures of his own sense of persecution by Dubliners, publishers, censors and the English.
Mr. Ellman's book thoroughly bears out an observation T.S. Eliot once made to me- that Joyce was the most completely self-centered man he had ever known. Even Joyce, modestly comparing himself with Ibsen, calls himself the lesser "egoarch." But to say that genius, which can turn the observed material of a lifetime into a world of art, is egotistic is not the same thing as to make the same judgment on anyone else.
A person can be egotistic because he is too little or because he is too great for his surroundings. Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom are double aspects of consciousness brooding over humanity in the isolation of greatness. In "Finnegans Wake," the ego of Earwicker becomes the universal of geography and history. As Bernard Shaw, another Dubliner, well understood, Joyce's esthetic egocentricity was largely the result of his early life of feckless poverty and uprootedness in Dublin.
The tragedy of the artistic genius, who through circumstance becomes an enforced egocentric, is that he can only achieve his prime task- his art- through living his life and through entering into other lives with which he is always in an unequal relation. With Joyce, this tragedy began as farce: the long tears of poverty in Dublin and teaching English in Trieste- years of not being recognized, of censorship and persecution. There followed a decade or so as a visited literary figure in Paris.
In the last years of his life, when he was already tormented by the operations he has to undergo for his iritis, Joyce's family began to pay the price of their past of wandering, misery and uprootedness, when his daughter, Lucia, went mad. Lucia's mental condition occasioned the last, the most terrible, and perhaps the most reasonable of Joyce's self-identifications. For years, he refused to believe that she was ill, and when at last he had to admit it, he saw in her hallucinations insights of the kind he was putting into "Finnegans Wake."
In a diagnostic, which Mr. Ellmann does not like, Jung wrote that "the relationship of father and daughter was a kind of mystical identity or participation." Jung called Lucia "her father's anima inspiratrix." "Joyce's psychological style is definitely schizophrenic, with the difference, however, that the ordinary patient cannot help himself talking and thinking in such a way, while Joyce willed it and moreover developed it with all his creative forces..."
This takes us to the psychological conundrum of "Finnegans Wake." Mr. Ellmann seems to accept the view of all good Joyceans that "Finnegans Wake" is Joyce's masterpiece and not an immense aberration. And Mr. Ellmann is to be respected, for, although a Joycean, his love of his subject never comes between Joyce and the reader. Indeed, he writes with a cool and masterful detachment, which allows the reader to approach Joyce with a completely open mind, sometimes liking the warm humanity, sometimes detesting the cold arrogance of the man, always having the sense that he who was often a fool in his life was always wise in his work.
Toward the end, Joyce wrote what may be his best poem, "Epilogue to Ibsen's Ghosts." It is about Captain Alving, who never appears in Ibsen's play but whom all the characters agree to have been a scoundrel. Dissolute husband of Mrs. Alving, father of her son Olaf and also, by a maidservant, of Olaf's half-sister- Captain Alving, from whom Olaf inherited syphilis; the father, like Joyce, of one sick and one healthy child. In Joyce's poem, Captain Alving becomes the "life" of Ibsen, without which, after all, it would have been impossible to write "Ghosts"; the life is as much the author of the play as Ibsen sitting at his desk. Here Joyce accepts his own tragedy and the tragedies it produces. He accepts his own life as writer of his work, plotter of the poet, one might say:
The shack's ablaze. That canting scamp, The carpenter, has dished the parson. Now had they kept their power damp Like me there would have been no arson. Nay, more, were I not all I was, Weak, wanton, waster out and out, There would have been no world's applause And damn all to write home about.
Mr. Spender, the British poet and critic, is the author of "World Within World," an autobiography, and "The Destructive Element," a study of modern writers.
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Don Giovanni-HD

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

The Revelations of “Don Giovanni” at the Met

BY RICHARD BRODY

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Kate Lindsey and Adam Plachetka in “Don Giovanni,” at the Met, February 2nd.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY JULIETA CERVANTES/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

The current production of “Don Giovanni” at the Metropolitan Opera,running through March 6th, is the opera of the moment, a profoundly political and moral vision that’s as much of our time as of Mozart’s own. I saw it on Saturday night; it’s as much of a historical revelation as it is a musical delight.

Mozart’s glorious music sets the scene on a monstrosity, and his musical realization of a monstrous world and its deliverance is one of the glories of the history of art. Don Giovanni—his Don Juan—isn’t just a serial seducer, he’s a rapist. The opera’s first dramatic scene finds him in the bedroom of a noblewoman, Donna Anna (sung by Elza van den Heever), who fights him off. Her cries are heard by her father, the Commendatore (James Morris), who challenges her masked assailant. In the ensuing sword fight, Don Giovanni (Peter Mattei) kills the Commendatore and flees, unrecognized. The main plot of the opera is the effort of Donna Anna and her betrothed, Don Ottavio (Dmitry Korchak), along with other victims of Don Giovanni, to identify the rapist and murderer and then to catch him and take revenge for his crimes against women and his murder of the Commendatore.

“Don Giovanni,” which Mozart composed and premièred in 1787, is a closeup, cross-sectional panorama of feudal Europe as seen from the revelatory angle of sex and love, pleasure and power, seduction and fidelity, and the state of relations between men and women. The Met’s production, directed by Michael Grandage, is aptly set in the opera’s own era, and Grandage captures its implications with an extraordinary dramatic clarity that’s equally the work of the splendid cast of singers. There have been many efforts to update the action to later times—notably, Peter Sellars’s production, which situates it on the Lower East Side in the nineteen-eighties, and two new productions, one set in a current-day mansion and another in a current-day corporate headquarters. But there may be no classic opera that more closely addresses the sociopolitical specifics of its time and place than does “Don Giovanni,”  and Grandage’s production, though modest in reinventive ambition, provides a worthy clarity and focus to the opera’s theatrical genius.

Mozart’s musical masterwork, from 1787, is also a dramatic masterwork, because of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto, as well as Mozart’s musical and psychological conception. Mozart was, in effect, a dramatist in music, endowed with a finesse and a power of psychological insight akin to that of the greatest novelists. He was also a man of free-thinking, empathetic rage, and the rage of “Don Giovanni” is more than just a denunciation of a single unhinged predator; it’s a jagged-edged slash at the arrogance of the class of nobles—and a vision of women living in a state of subjection and vulnerability, in desperate hope of sincere love as well as of stalwart protection. As such, “Don Giovanni” is both a dramatic unfolding of a philosophical theory of empathetic love among equals and a wild and ironic harbinger of the French Revolution.

The core of the opera—and it’s a moment that the production emphasizes with its starkest staging and most passionate intensity—is the scene in which Donna Anna tells Ottavio that she has recognized Don Giovanni by his voice. She narrates, in a long, searingly confessional recitative, how Don Giovanni stole into her room, how she took him for Ottavio, how she fought him off, and how the killing occurred. Donna Anna follows the tale with an aria of a harrowing fury, “Or sai chi l’onore” (“Now you know who tried to steal my honor”).

It’s a scene that foreshadows Verdi and verismo, a moment of pure righteous passion, of the moral force of sacred justice—and what Mozart and Da Ponte top it with is dramatic and moral shock. Don Ottavio, to whom Donna Anna has just poured out her heart, has trouble believing her: “How could one ever believe a nobleman capable of so black a crime?” But he decides “to seek the truth” for her sake: “I will disabuse her or avenge her.”

Don Ottavio is no villain—he’s an intensely sympathetic lover. His aria that follows, “Dalla sua pace,” is a tender song of love and empathy: his peace of mind depends on hers; her joys and sufferings are his. He’s a moderate, judicious man who doesn’t fly off at the handle; he has to know the facts before taking on a mortal duty. He trusts in the system, and that system is the very subject of the opera.

While he’s being pursued by Don Ottavio and Donna Anna, Don Giovanni is busy seducing another woman—Zerlina, a young peasant woman who is about to marry the rustic Masetto. Their duet is the model of Giovanni’s method: he flirts, he talks glitteringly, he makes false promises of wealth (“I will change your life”) and even of marriage, and with his suave wit and heartily elegant bearing, he seemingly wins her heart. After elaborate machinations to distract Masetto, the Don carries her off by force and tries to rape her.

Mattei, as Don Giovanni, is magnificently cast. He’s tall, handsome, graceful, and vigorous, and his baritone voice rolls out with a hearty, lofty warmth. He plays the Don not as a repulsive old lecher but as a man of truly seductive virtues, of worldly insight and Olympian command, who perverts his own talents and abuses his own position in cavalier pursuit of pleasure. Mozart and Da Ponte lend this nobleman a true nobility of character, which is what makes his tyrannical arrogance no mere transgression but a tragedy. The depravity, high-handedness, and cruelty of an authentically sophisticated nobility, both as a ruling class and as a model of refinement and character, is tragedy—Don Giovanni’s, his fiefdom’s, and all Europe’s.

Mozart and Da Ponte aren’t blind to Don Giovanni’s virtues, but they’re most evident in the eyes of a particular character—Donna Elvira, another woman whom he had seduced and abandoned. The role’s fierce musical glories (superbly rendered by the soprano Emma Bell) reflect the complexity of her torment—she starts by craving revenge but can’t deny her love for him. In her desperate affection for a scoundrel whose latent merit she is perhaps alone in seeing, her hatred turns to pity and she offers him, at the last moment, his final chance at redemption, telling him, “Change your life!”

Don Giovanni can’t change his life, of course—and the composer and librettist bring him to justice in a furious, slyly ironic conclusion that’s one of the greatest tag endings in the history of theatre. It follows the seeming climax of the action, after the Don is recognized as the man who tried to rape Donna Anna and killed her father, the Commendatore. Ottavio urges Anna, in effect, to get on with her life and marry him; but she is inconsolable (singing one of the most beautiful and insightful lines in all opera, “Leave me this one outlet for all my sorrows”). Ottavio takes it upon himself, as he had promised, to avenge himself on Don Giovanni, but the criminal proves elusive, and Don Ottavio seeks justice: he heads off to press charges. After filing them, he returns to Donna Anna to urge her to calm down, to trust in the law, and to marry him.

Donna Anna is astounded—she can’t think of pleasure until Don Giovanni has been punished. Ottavio considers her delay “cruel,” and she sings another great tragic aria explaining that she loves him but is still unconsoled: “Maybe someday, heaven will take pity on me.”

This should be, realistically, the last line of the opera. Don Giovanni is a master of disguises and of ruses as well as of the sword—he won’t be caught alive by the likes of Ottavio. And the powerful Don Giovanni has even more powerful friends—he won’t be arrested, he’ll never face trial. Mozart and Da Ponte are saying, in effect, “Forget it, Anna, it’s Europe.”

What Mozart and Da Ponte offer instead is a deus ex machina of Christian morality but of conspicuously Greco-Roman inspiration (there’s even a reference to “Proserpina and Pluto” to make the point). Don Giovanni, taking refuge in a secluded garden, stumbles upon the tomb of the Commendatore, which speaks to him and seeks his repentance. In a terrifyingly sublime roar of hubris, Don Giovanni invites the spirit of the Commendatore to join him for dinner. The ultimate result, of course, is that the Commendatore opens the earth and sends Don Giovanni to the flames of Hell, restoring order, through divine intervention, that couldn’t be restored through human authority.

It’s a great moment of theatre (one that’s played to the hilt in the Met’s production), and, of course, it’s a brilliantly intentional display of flaming bullshit: there is no Hell and no God for Don Giovanni to fear, and Mozart and Da Ponte are saying, in effect, that the feudal continent’s reigning Don Giovannis are above the law and that nothing in the social order as it currently exists, nothing short of the sort of divine intervention that plays well in wishes and churches and prayers and theatres but has little to do with the way of the world, will bring them to justice. Two years later came the French Revolution.

The world in which a woman can find earnest, enduring love—that did exist, and Mozart saw it and knew it in his heart. (Maria Popova, at Brain Pickings, points to the devoted ardor of Mozart’s own marriage to Constanze Weber.) But a world in which a serial rapist and pseudo-romantic predator could get away with his actions, could rampage with impunity because of his social position, his reputation, his wealth, and his power—and, for that matter, in which the social virtues of erotic vitality and charismatic energy are distorted into crime, and then, in which that crime goes unpunished—and in which an honest and reasonable romantic couple of sober virtue such as Donna Anna and Don Ottavio doesn’t stand a chance against the unchecked will of the grandees—this was, for Mozart, an absolute abomination, a deal-killer, the breaking of the social contract. In his lyrical effervescence and visionary passion, he saw past the end of the old world. He didn’t live long enough to see much of the new one—he died in 1791.

Da Ponte, however, arrived in New York in 1805. He taught Italian at Columbia, founded an opera company, staged “Don Giovanni,” and died here in 1838 at the age of eighty-nine. Had Mozart (who was born in 1756) only lived to join him here—where they could gleefully have skewered onstage another system of erotic oppression, such as the puritanical heritage . . .

Les Contes d'Hoffmann - HD

The Metropolitan Opera - Les Contes d'Hoffmann - HD Live

Les Contes d'Hoffmann - act one
Metropolitan Opera, New York

Offenbach Les Contes d'Hoffmann; Vittorio Grigolo, Thomas Hampson, Kate Lindsey cond: Yves Abel, dir: Bartlett Sher; HD Live broadcast from Metropolitan Opera, New York Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 31 2015
Star rating: 4.0
Fine singing and spectacular if unfocussed staging, seen in the cinema

We went along to the Curzon Chelsea Cinema on Saturday 31 January 2015 to see the Metropolitan Opera's High-Definition Broadcast of their production of Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Bartlett Sher's production was new in 2009, and this time round featured Vittorio Grigolo as Hoffmann, Kate Lindsey as The Muse/Nicklausse, Thomas Hampson as the four villains, Erin Morley as Olympia, Hibla Gerzmava as Antonia and Stella,Christine Rice as Giulietta, Tony Stevenson as the four servants, plus David Pittsinger, David Crawford, Dennis Petersen and Olesya Petrova. Yves Abel conducted, set designs were byMichael Yeargan, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by James F Ingalls, and choreography by Dou Dou Huang. The stage director was Gina Lapinski and the broadcast was Barbara Willis Sweete.

Sher's production was large scale, spectacular and deliberately used an element of theatricality in the stage action itself. The stage was divided into two areas, fore stage and rear stage with the latter being hidden and with flats opening to reveal the each tableau. The prologue and epilogue featured all of the cast looking on at Hoffmann, whose writing desk and typewriter (on the fore stage) were present throughout. In addition to the chorus there was a dance troupe, whose presence was a little too ubiquitous except for the Antonia act. There were a number of pensees, whose origin was unclear, notably the presence of multiple Olympias and, at one point, multiple Olympias wooed by multiple Hoffmanns.

Kate Lindsey's spectacularly fine Nicklausse/Muse was clearly the eminence grise of events and she seemed to be controlling Thomas Hampson's villains. The two exchanged all sorts of glances, probably not very noticeable to the theatrical audience.


Like many directors before him, Sher struggled to make the students in the prologue sufficiently interesting. Act one was a teeming Berlin-style cabaret around the 1920's; full of extravagantly dressed individuals. It was spectacular but seemed to little coherent dramatic effect.  Act two was simpler and more dramatically effective with stylish designs from Yeargan. Act three's Venice seemed very much a visual homage to the John Schlesinger production at Covent Garden.

I am not sure whether Bartlett Sher had a clear dramatic arc for the opera (the way Richard Jones had in his production at ENO) and in many ways the evening felt like three one-act operas. But it was superbly sung. It is pointless nowadays moaning about French style and diction, but the singers were some of the best.

Hoffmann is a big sing for a lyric tenor. Vittorio Grigolo did not sound under strain and sang with vibrant beauty and flexibility throughout. Hearing him in the theatre (in Massenet's Manon at Covent Garden) he has a stylish rather than huge voice and he is very much in the Alfredo Kraus mode.  I thought that what we heard in the cinema, the recording, did rather put a false perspective on the sound with Grigolo being somewhat spotlit. But it was certainly worth hearing, and seeing him. He was ardent, vibrant and lyrical with a willingness to sing quietly and stylishly, and winningly impetuous.

Erin Morley was an admirable Olympia, clean and stylish in the coloratura and suitably doll-like. Hibla Gerzmava (originally scheduled to sing all the heroines) was a passionate Antonia, singing with a spinto edge to her voice which brought quite a thrilling tone to the music but combined with a nice feeling for the phrasing. Christine Rice as Giulietta rather suffered from the edition used, but she was stylish and sexy as required even if wearing a full 18th century gown with wig.

Thomas Hampson was brilliant as the four villains. He can clearly encompass the notes of the four, rather differently written parts, and gave us some beautifully shaped music. Perhaps he was not the darkest villain I have heard, but that chimed in with the production.

Kate Lindsey, however, provided some of the finest singing in the evening as she gave a consistently fine and engrossing account of Nicklausse/The Muse. She was highly watchable as well as sounding gorgeous, but you constantly felt an intelligence in the way she shaped the music and sang with a limpid fine-grained tone.

Here perhaps, I should explain what the edition was - who got what so to speak. We heard a very full version of the traditional version, with sung recitative though in fact the main influence on the edition used seems to have been the discredited Oeser Edition of 1976. The role of Nicklausse was very full, so Kate Lindsey got lots to do and in Act one we got the trio instead of the non-canonic J'ai des yeux. It was Act three that suffered most, as it was performed as if none of the last 25 years of Offenbach scholarship had happened, so we got no extra music for Giulietta and we did get the non-canonic Scintille Diamant and the sextet. As Hampson sang Scintille Diamant so superbly, I can forgive its inclusion, but I would be happy if I never heard the sextet again. Of course, this all meant that the ending to Act three was a damp squib.

Tony Stevenson was clearly having a field day as the four servants, whilst David Pittsinger was Luther and Crespel, David Crawford was Hermann and Schlemil, Dennis Petersen was Nathanael and Spalanzani and Olesya Petrova was Antonia's mother.

There was one element of the staging which did rather bother me, the women of the dance troupe were dressed for Act three in scanty underwear, high-heels and 18th century wigs and it was in these outfits that they lounged about in the prologue and epilogue. But there were no men in similar outfits, all the naked flesh on display was female (and frankly compared to the John Schlesinger production at Covent Garden the Venice Act was pretty tame).


The director of the film, Barbara Willis Sweete seemed to have a penchant for close ups, with occasional wide-angle setting shots. These latter often did not work very well as some of the sets (for the prologue for instance) were quite dark. The cameras seemed to spend very little time at all in the middle distance, so that we were sometimes unclear of what the context for the action was. The film worked because the leading singers, Grigolo, Lindsey and Hampson were so satisfying to view close up. But it is worth bearing in mind that the live at operatic experience at the Metropolitan Opera can be quite a frustrating experience as the house is so large that even a good seat can place you at quite a distance from the stage so that the film was a good way of getting a closer, more intimate experience.

The cinema audience in Chelsea seemed to be very much in the older bracket, and many seemed to be regulars. There was also a noticeable minority for whom the modern cinema was simpler, in terms of access and local convenience, than the labyrinthine opera house.

The interval features involved soprano Deborah Voigt introducing the plot and doing short interviews with the artists. All this was shot back stage, and in the intermission proper the cameras kept running so we had a fascinating glimpse of the striking and setting of the various stage sets. What was interesting here was quite how labour intensive this was.

I don't think that for me, filmed opera will ever replace opera in the theatre. But a visit to the cinema is certainly cheaper than flying to New York to catch the Metropolitan Opera live!