The instrumental versions of Offenbach's "Barcarolle" are excellent, but they will not make a listener weep, as the vocal performance most certainly can. This is a dramatic piece and must be sung for its full effect to materialise. And this effect is extremely powerful, and accounts for the song’s extraordinary popularity. Why? Because it is a light song about nothing much, love and its madness, night and its charms, that is nevertheless freighted with some profound sadness. It finds a modest variety of tragedy in something quite commonplace. The song is harmless, and yet heavy with the faint implication of grief, on the one hand, and of menace on the other, both at little better than homeopathic levels, and all the more effective for this understatement, for it seems, as A. C. Bradley acutely remarked of poetry in general, because it seems in speaking of one thing to make just visible the secret of all.
And it achieves this generality, a specious generality as all poetic beauty is, because it draws on its dramatic setting to body forth two female approaches to male suitors and companions. One, delivered by the mezzo soprano, is characterised by a generous empathy, and offers the unsatisfactory Hoffman inspiration, for if they choose women can motivate even the most wretched and inferior man and make him do wonders. The other approach, performed by the soprano, is that of a narcissistic and extractive personality who is interested only in taking Hoffman’s reflection as a token of her power, and will not even trouble herself to keep it, passing it on to a malign force for disposal. The act of acquisition is all, and even possession is little or nothing.
When it is well performed one can hear this distinction even without knowing the story, as in this superb rendering by Anna Netrebko and Elīna Garanča.
Yet these two quite different personalities sing identical words, words that are as anodyne as they are charming, but they sing these words as if with entirely different meanings, and, miraculously, the music, which is just slightly too slow for either joy or comfort, serves both equally well. The word tension is used carelessly and too often in criticism, but it seems to me justified in this case. There is a tension between the characters, between their versions of the lyric, and between the protean support that the music offers to each delivery. It is a strange and moving experience.
The soprano, Giulietta, sings with a faint hint of menace and confident of victory, while Nicklausse, a woman disguised in man’s clothing so that she can watch over Hoffmann without him being conscious of the fact, is clearly aware that, in spite of her affectionate care, Giulietta will succeed. They both know what will happen, and they know this because they know men better than men know themselves. But in all this Hoffman is an incidental matter only; the tragic conflict is between one woman and another, and it is this which gives the song its emotional volume; it is the tragedy of the tender mezzo- voice beaten from the field by the stronger yet pitiless magic of the pure soprano.