Les Contes d'Hoffmann: Komische Oper Berlin
About the Event
Director Barrie Kosky tells Offenbach's bizarre and fantastic story as a disturbing nightmare of an artist who is in danger of losing his own self.
In this production with only one single soprano in all three female roles, and a total of seven performers in the role of Hoffmann, the title role in the opera's first two acts will be sung — for the first time in the piece's 132‐year performance history — in the way that the composer had originally planned: by a baritone!
Hoffmann's fate comprises three women. Three unhappy love affairs. Or are they in fact three female forms which exist only in Hoffmann's imagination? – Olympia the doll, Antonia the singer and Giulietta the courtesan. The artificial body without a soul, the artist without a voice, and the seductress without a heart. They also represent Hoffmann's own fears of loss: loss of reality, loss of his own artistic expression, and loss of identity. In the end, Hoffmann must flee as a murderer – flee from himself and his fantasies, which increasingly come to resemble a bad trip.
The lasting success of Offenbach's fantasy opera, whose inaugural performance was held only posthumously and under difficult circumstances, is not just due to its plot, but also the inexhaustible creative richness of the Offenbachian score. »The Song of Little Zaches«, Olympia's Aria or the famous barcarole are just three of this opera's numerous outstanding pieces. Offenbach, the Jewish Cologne‐born Parisian, fused Jewish, German, and French elements in his music to form something new, something which shaped the Paris music scene to such an extent that it today seems genuinely French to us.
Opéra fantastique in five acts (1881). Libretto by Jules Barbier. Based on the drama of the same name by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré.
Cast / Production
Hoffmann 1 — Thomas Thieme
Hoffmann 2 - Arturo Chacón‐Cruz
Stella / Olympia / Antonia / Giulietta — Nicole Chevalier
La Muse / La mère d’Antonia — Karolina Gumos
Lindorf/Coppélius/Le docteur Miracle/ Dapertutto — Andrew Foster‐Williams
Andrès/Spalanzani/ Pitichinaccio — Peter Renz
Cochenille/Crespel/Peter Schlémil — Philipp Meierhöfer
