With his new production of Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann, unveiled Saturday night at Santa Fe Opera, director Christopher Alden did not merely lay an egg; he laid a supersized soufflé that over the course of three and a quarter hours collapsed under its own weight.

I pitied the singers for the direction to which they were subjected, and none more than the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey (as Hoffmann's Muse and his sidekick Nicklausse) and the tenor David Cangelosi (as Andrés, Cochenille, Frantz and Pitichinaccio). The former left almost no syllable unaccompanied by some sort of awkward gymnastics, and the latter spent ample spans spinning around in circles for indistinct reasons.

It's hard to know exactly where the director's instruction ends and the performer's interpretation begins, but in this cluttered production only one singer managed to maintain dignity in the midst of the directorial onslaught. That was the tenor Paul Groves, who depicted the title character with a natural bearing, even to the point of not overplaying drunkenness. Perhaps he drew a line in the sand with Alden, or perhaps the idea was that he is real while everyone else is an imagined caricature. Anyway, his portrayal was dramatically satisfying and his singing was compelling, boasting fluid phrases and a centered tone that was bright and penetrating without sacrificing warmth.

Lindsey produced a well-focused timbre and sang attractively; perhaps it was the distracting direction that prevented her from imposing a strong musical imprint on her part. We must be grateful to the bass Wayne Tigges, who was the cover singer for the roles of Hoffmann's four nemeses (Lindorf, Coppélius, Dr. Miracle and Dapertutto) and assumed the parts only at the dress rehearsal, when Gidon Saks withdrew from the production due to laryngitis. Tigges acquitted himself honorably, though his voice lacked the sonorous depth that might have conveyed true villainy.

Offenbach desired that a single soprano depict all three heroines (four if you count Stella, who scarcely opens her mouth), a high hurdle since the three require essentially different voice types. Erin Wall was ill advised to accept this challenge. Olympia's high-lying coloratura fell outside her sphere of competence, and the shrillness of her often out-of-tune notes above F similarly torpedoed Antonia (plus she lacked a respectable trill, required for that character's extended final exhalation). Giulietta fared considerably better, but it was too late for Wall to recoup her losses.

Small parts were sung by Harold Wilson (Luther, Crespel), Mark Schowalter (Spalanzani, in a fright wig), Jill Grove (Antonia's mother) and Darik Knutsen (Schlémil), and the company's well-scrubbed apprentices worked to fine effect, particularly the male chorus. Stephen Lord conducted an intelligently paced, well-balanced interpretation, and the orchestra played cleanly overall.

The principal set (by Allen Moyer) was a student beer-hall, grand but dowdy in the manner of an old-fashioned church social room, here with a mural of the Rhine covering the rear wall. The tables were re-arranged as platforms on which other scenes might be enacted as Hoffmann revisited memories of his past loves, with site-specific decorations suggesting the various locales. Costumes (by Constance Hoffman) were lavish and lovely, a parade of frocks and uniforms that consumed acres of iridescent silk and frou-frou.

The musical text was based on the new edition of the work by Michael Kaye but nonetheless employed a historically inauthentic mixture of sung recitative and spoken dialogue. The latter was a miscalculation since most of the singers achieved only approximations of the French tongue and enlivened their declamations with egregious whooping, shouting and over-enunciation.

On the other hand, the evening did provide some unanticipated language instruction when, in the Olympia act, two references to le juif Élias ("the Jew Elias") were rendered in the seat-back English translations as "the pawnbroker Elias." This might not have delighted Offenbach, who would have identified himself as a Jew but not as a pawnbroker.

The evening was filled with puzzlements. Why, in the Prologue, did Lindorf (Hoffmann's rival for the love of Stella) kiss and grope Hoffmann's pseudo-male Muse? Why, when Hoffmann ostensibly viewed Olympia through magic glasses, did he actually train his binoculars on the audience? Why did people in the Giulietta act stagger about wearing gilded picture frames around their necks? And so on. Amid the surfeit of activity and the generally lackluster singing, one ceased to care about the welfare of this opera before it reached its midpoint.

IF YOU GO

The Tales of Hoffmann continues with performances on Wednesday, July 21; on July 30; and on Aug. 3, 7, 11, 17, 24, and 28. For ticket information, call the Santa Fe Opera at 986-5900 or 800-280-4654.