Though the song for Nicklausse is better than any of the music supplied for The Muse, its omission is at least consistent with the production’s view of N/M. The deletion of “J’ai des yeux” is a more complicated matter, for its music was originally one of several proposed settings of a song for Dapertutto in the Venetian act, shifted to this one when “Scintille, diamant” was installed as his big aria. In both of the affected cases (I’ll discuss Dapertutto’s upon arrival), these changes alter our views of the characters who sing them, and raise the question of how the nemeses should be represented. These roles are short, after all, and surrounded by a crowded field. They haven’t much room to differentiate themselves, and given that they share an identity musically and vocally, the differentiation must rely heavily on characterization for the eye, supplemented by whatever distinctions the artist is able to establish with the voice. Like Lindorf shorn of his couplets, Coppélius without “J’ai des yeux” must be a quite remarkable character bass to make much of an impression.

In the Barbier/Carré play, it is specified that Coppélius “has a very strong Jewish accent.” That instruction is dropped in Barbier’s libretto, but I don’t think I am reading too much into the scuttling, fast-talking setting of Coppélius’ music, chattering along in the lower range (it rises above the middle D-flat only once, and that briefly, and never partakes of sustained tone), to suspect that Offenbach, with the strong background in music for the synagogue he inherited from his father, was, consciously or not, painting a picture of a Jewish peddler of gadgets and miraculous trinkets, out for the share that Spalanzani is trying to cheat him of with a worthless note from the bankrupt house of the Jew Elias. That would have been familiar territory to audiences of the time, and would have given an extra comic edge to the dealmaking and deception. In any case, “J’ai des yeux” is a marked change. It upgrades the sales items from things that measure, or spectacles and lorgnettes that turn the world to black or white, to actual eyes, living eyes of flame that can pierce to the soul and see into a woman’s heart. It is a pair of these remarkably lifelike eyes (they are the first thing the guests will soon exclaim about) that Coppélius has contributed to the marvelous machine-woman that Spalanzani is about to commercialize. And it is in celebration of the eye that the chanson, still up-tempo and full of word-play, takes the voice into the upper-middle range and broadens it out, turning the character bass into a singing bass-baritone of powerful operatic presence, and making of Coppélius a much more dangerous figure. With the song, van Horn could have at least deployed the qualities of his voice to some purpose. Without it, his lack of more than minimal deftness with the rest left the character without much profile. But further: you can’t fool me. As presented, this is only Lindorf, that Satanic old bureaucrat, self-admittedly pitiable in “rôles d’amoureux langoureux,” intruding himself into the story with no transformation for eye or ear. And so it will remain in the succeeding acts, depriving us of all the theatrical devices (of costume, makeup, hair), as well as those of vocal characterization, that can make these roles vividly eccentric, contrasting manifestations of Hoffmann’s evil spirits, as they are in E. T. A.’s tales and are clearly intended to be in play and opera. A great singing actor, or even merely a great stage personality who revels in the malevolent, might rise above this dreary choice. But how often can we count on that?