PROGRAMME

Offenbach, Jacques:
Les contes d'Hoffmann

(Programme is subject to change)

ABOUT THE EVENT

Jacques Offenbach's opera "Les contes d'Hoffmann" will be performed at the Theater an der Wien in this season.

Team
Conductor, Riccardo Frizza
Director, William Friedkin
Stage design, Michael Curry
Hoffmann, Kurt Streit
Costume design, Andrea Schmidt-Futterer
Light design, Mark Jonathan

Cast
March 2012
Olympia, Mari Eriksmoen
Antonia, Juanita Lascarro
Giulietta, Angel Blue
La Muse Nicklausse, Roxana Constantinescu
Lindorf | Coppélius | Le docteur Miracle | Le capitaine Dapertutto, Aris Argiris
Andrés | Cochenille | Frantz  | Pitichinaccio, Andreas Conrad
Spalanzani, Oliver Ringelhahn
Schlémil | Hermann, Martijn Cornet
La voix de la tombe, Ann-Beth Solvang

July 2012
Hoffmann, Kurt Streit
Olympia | Antonia | Giulietta | Stella, Marlis Petersen
La Muse Nicklausse, Roxana Constantinescu
Lindorf | Coppélius | Le docteur Miracle | Le capitaine Dapertutto, John Relyea
Andrés | Cochenille | Frantz | Pitichinaccio, Oliver Ringelhahn
Spalanzani, Erik Årman
Schlémil | Hermann, Martijn Cornet
Luther | Crespel, Pavel Kudinov
Nathanael, Julien Behr
La voix de la tombe, Ann-Beth Solvang

Wiener Symphoniker
Arnold Schoenberg Choir

E. T. A. Hoffmann produced tales full of comical, witty and sometimes disconcerting imagination. Into the cosy world of the German bourgeoisie he placed demons, sorceresses and changelings. Sometimes these encounters bring happiness, sometimes ruination. It is also often unclear whether the events are real or merely in the heads of the characters. More than any other writer, Hoffmann focused on the question of how we perceive the world. His work was more popular in France than it was in his homeland. In 1851 Jules Barbier and Michel Carré made the idiosyncratic writer the hero of his own adventures in their drama Les contes d’Hoffmann. Jacques Offenbach was inspired by the play to create his last large-scale theatrical production.

With his friend Nicklausse and a few students, Hoffmann is waiting in the Lutter & Wegner tavern for the woman he loves, the singer Stella, who is at that moment putting in a brilliant performance as Donna Anna in the theatre next door. To pass the time he tells the stories of his ill-fated amorous adventures with Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta. He was passionately in love with all three, and lost all three under peculiar circumstances. Again and again it appears that his happiness has been wrecked by an adversary who is pursuing him in various guises. Even now Hoffmann recognises his nemesis in one of the listeners, Councillor Lindorf. The villain is now after Stella. When Hoffmann finishes his tales, Lindorf really does leave with the singer. Is this pursuer a man or a devil? And Hoffmann’s faithful friend Nicklausse, is he a man, a woman, a helpful muse or a creature of the devil? At the end Nicklausse, as a muse, promises the lonely Hoffmann great fame as a writer, but is that an adequate substitute for love?

Jacques Offenbach died shortly after the premiere of Les contes d’Hoffmann. Consequently, only a considerably abridged version of the work was performed, much of which no longer bore the composer’s stamp. But not so very long ago important documents were discovered that mean the majority of the work can now be reconstructed as Offenbach intended. The Theater an der Wien presents the recently reconstructed original version of Les contes d’Hoffmann in Vienna for the first time.

Last update 2012 Editorial Team Classictic.com

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Artists of Les contes d'Hoffmann

Blue, Angel

, Soloist

Frizza, Riccardo

, Conductor

Lascarro, Juanita

, Soloist

Eriksmoen, Mari

, Soloist

Wiener Symphoniker

, Orchestra
The Wiener Symphoniker can look back on an eventful history, an outward sign being the several alterations that its name has undergone. Unforgettable will remain the legendary concert before Pope John XXIII at the Vatican in 1959 as well as the world premieres of such masterpieces as Bruckner’s 9th Symphony, Arnold Schönberg’s Gurrelieder, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand and Franz Schmidt’s The Book with the Seven Seals. During the First World War, the orchestra was saved from being disbanded only by a fusion with the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra, founded in 1913. In 1944 however, the orchestra’s activities came to a halt for eight months.

Arnold Schönberg Chor

, Choir