About the event 'Les Contes d'Hoffmann'

Jacques Offenbach's last work, "Les Contes d'Hoffmann", is both bizarre and visionary, sensual and morbid. Giuseppe Filianoti embodies the composer's double in Robert Carsen's imaginative staging at the Bastille Opera House in Paris.

In his famous biography of Offenbach, Kracauer summarised and defined the legend of the Les Contes d'Hoffmann: even more than the composer's spiritual testament, the work is a faithful self-portrait of the man and artist. Offenbach recognised himself in his hero and, just as Hoffmann was unable to hold onto any of his loves, the king of operetta had never managed to write the grand opera he dreamed of. Kracauer even mentions a pact with death: "Let me finish my work in peace and I will follow you." In fact death did not keep its side of the bargain and came too soon: Les Contes d'Hoffmann remained unfinished, a Hoffmann-like work itself, enigmatic and elusive.

The legend, though attractive, is incomplete. On the last day of his life, 5 October 1880, Offenbach was not engaged in a solemn stand-off with death: he was running around Paris and working, just as he had every day for several decades.

The watching, gentle muse, Hoffmann's haunted inebriation, Olympia's icy coloratura, Antonia's deathly song, Giulietta's Baudelairian sensuality: they all make Les Contes d'Hoffmann the composer's absolute masterpiece, just as he had hoped.

Sung in French

Jesus Lopez-Cobos, Conductor
Robert Carsen, Stage Director
Michael Levine, Sets and Costumes
Jean Kalman, Lighting
Philippe Giraudeau, Choreography and movement
Patrick Marie Aubert, Chorus Master
 

Last update 2012 Editorial Team Classictic.com

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