plot. However, certain important changes were made in the process of adapting the story to film: In the prologue of the film, all of Lindorf's music is excluded, making him a silent character. Stella's profession is changed from an opera singer appearing in Mozart's Don Giovanni to a ballet dancer. "The Tale of Antonia" is shortened, ending with the powerful trio for Antonia, the ghost of her mother, and Dr. Miracle rather than Antonia's death scene. The role of Nicklaus is abridged, though Nicklaus (as played by Pamela Brown) still appears. Cast Production In the later years of his partnership with Pressburger, Powell became interested in what he termed "a composed film", a marriage of image to operatic music. The finale of Black Narcissus and the ballet sequence of The Red Shoes were earlier steps toward his goal. The Tales of Hoffmann is an achievement of this ideal, as the entire opera was prerecorded to create the soundtrack and the film was edited to the rhythms of the music. The production is completely without dialogue and, with the exception of Robert Rounseville and Ann Ayars, none of the actors did their own singing. Some of the singers had established careers in Britain at the time. Grahame Clifford, for example, had been a leading comedian with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for several years, and Monica Sinclair was fast becoming an audience favourite at Covent Garden; she would later become one of the company's most popular artists of the next two decades. The acting (especially by Helpmann) is highly stylised and similar to that of the silent-film era. Each tale is marked by a primary colour denoting its theme. "The Tale of Olympia", set in Paris, has yellow contours highlighting the farcical nature and tone of the first act. "The Tale of Giulietta" is a hellish depiction of Venice, where dark colours, especially red, are used. The final tale, set in Greece, uses different shades of blue, alluding to its sad nature. The set design is deliberately made to look artificial with the costumes similarly stylised. The opening scene of the "Tale of Giulietta" (in which Giulietta performs the "Barcarolle", the most famous theme of the opera) is staged on a gondola that moves through deliberately artificial Venetian canals, although it does not seem to actually move on the water. The Tales of Hoffmann was in production from 1 to 16