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Ian Patrick / OnP

Opera

Les Contes d'Hoffmann

Jacques Offenbach

Opéra Bastille

from 03 to 27 November 2016

3h25 with 2 intervals

Ramòn Vargas interprètera le rôle d’Hoffmann du 3 au 18 novembre 2016 à l'Opéra Bastille.

Les Contes d'Hoffmann

Opéra Bastille - from 03 to 27 November 2016

Synopsis

"We are made great by love and greater still by our tears."  

Hoffmann, Épilogue


By the time he came to tackle the composition of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Offenbach’s opus already included more than a hundred operas. Left unfinished when he died during rehearsals in October 1880, his last work combines fantasy, gravity and humour in an unexpectedly innovative synthesis of opera buffa, romantic opera and grand opera. This adaptation of three tales by E.T.A. Hoffmann, with a sprinkling of Goethe’s Faust, portrays the German poet as both narrator and hero recounting his love affairs with Olympia, Antonia and Giuletta. Robert Carsen’s spectacular production highlights the melancholy genius of a man marked by life, with a coherence and dramatic sense remarkable for a work that leaves numerous questions unanswered. Under the baton of Philippe Jordan, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Ermonela Jaho, Kate Aldrich, Yann Beuron and Ramón Vargas and Stefano Secco in the main role, interpret the legendary airs of this work whose brilliant mystery will continue to dazzle opera houses for countless years to come.

Duration : 3h25 with 2 intervals

Language : French

Show acts

Detail of acts

PROLOGUE

Hoffmann, a poet and composer, is in love with the prima donna Stella. As the opera begins, she is appearing in her most famous role: Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Hoffmann’s Muse declares that she will win back the artist and protect him from any further amorous obsessions. In order to do so, she will assume the identity of Hoffmann’s friend Nicklausse. Counsellor Lindorf also desires the diva Stella. As the curtain falls on Act I of Don Giovanni, Luther and his waiters hurriedly prepare for the arrival of Hoffmann and his friends. Hoffmann is in an agitated state of mind, but is soon persuaded to sing one of his songs: The Story of the Dwarf Kleinzach. As he sings, he is distracted and he recalls his first love. When three of the poet’s friends boast about their mistresses, Hoffmann asks them if they would like to hear about three of his past loves. The crowd fill their glasses and prepare to listen to Hoffmann’s tales.

ACT I - OLYMPIA

The eccentric inventor Spalanzani is hoping that his latest invention, a mechanical doll called “Olympia”, will earn him enough money to recoup his recent financial losses. Hoffmann has fallen in love with Olympia from a distance. Coppelius suddenly appears. He is the supplier of the doll’s eyes, and he has returned to obtain payment from Spalanzani. Coppelius sells Hoffmann a pair of glasses which make everything seem more beautiful. To get rid of him, Spalanzani gives him a worthless cheque. Guests now arrive and Spalanzani presents his “daughter” to them. She attracts great admiration. Hoffmann is completely enchanted by her, and when they are left alone he declares his love. Coppelius returns vowing revenge on Spalanzani for having cheated him. Hoffmann dances with Olympia. The doll’s mechanism gets out of control and she whirls Hoffmann off in a frenetic dance. He falls and breaks his glasses. Suddenly Cochenille, Spalanzani’s assistant, rushes in: Coppelius has taken his revenge by destroying Olympia. Hoffmann discovers that his beloved was a mechanical doll as the guests laugh uproariously…

ACT II - ANTONIA

Antonia sings a song about lost love. Her father interrupts her, making her promise not to sing any more: Antonia has inherited her mother’s fatal illness as well as her love of singing. Before going out, Crespel instructs his servant Frantz not to let anyone into the house. However Frantz is deaf and so readily admits Hoffmann and Nicklausse. Hoffmann sings a song he once wrote for Antonia. When she appears, they rediscover their passion. Crespel returns unexpectedly and Antonia rushes away to her room. Hoffmann decides to hide. Suddenly Dr. Miracle appears. Crespel accuses him of having intentionally killed his wife and now attempting to kill his daughter. Now aware of Antonia’s fragile health, Hoffmann persuades the reluctant girl to give up her hopes of a stage career. No sooner does he leave than Dr. Miracle reappears. He describes the fame that awaits her on the opera stage, and when Antonia hears her dead mother’s voice exhorting her to sing, she can no longer resist. As the scene reaches its climax Crespel, Hoffmann and Nicklausse rush in, but they are too late: Antonia is already dead…

ACT III – GIULIETTA

In Giulietta’s bordello a party is in progress. In a cynical drinking song, Hoffmann rejects love. Dapertutto tempts Giulietta with a magnificent diamond which he promises to give her if she will obtain Hoffmann’s reflection for him, just as she earlier obtained the shadow of her present lover, Schlemil. Giulietta proceeds to seduce Hoffmann. She begs him to give her his reflection as a proof of her love. Hoffmann readily agrees. Schlemil discovers Hoffmann and Giulietta together. The two men fight a duel and Hoffmann kills his rival, only to discover Giulietta leaving with her pimp Pitichinaccio. Dapertutto adds to their mocking laughter…

EPILOGUE

As Hoffmann concludes the last of his three tales, the performance of Don Giovanni has ended in the theatre. Hoffmann is now completely drunk. When Stella arrives in triumph, he can barely speak to her. The Diva leaves on Lindorf’s arm. The Muse now reappears. She instructs Hoffmann to rekindle the fire of his art, reminding him that tears are even more inspiring than love.

Artists

"Opéra fantastique" in a prologue, three acts and an epilogue (1881)

After Jules Barbier, Michel Carré
In French

Creative team

Cast

Orchestre et Chœurs de l’Opéra national de Paris

French and English surtitles

Media

  • The reawakening of a monumental work

    The reawakening of a monumental work

    Read the article

© Ian Patrick/OnP

The reawakening of a monumental work

Read the article

Offenbach and Hoffmann

07 min

The reawakening of a monumental work

By Jean-Christophe Keck

Who has never heard or even hummed the famous galop infernal from Orphée aux Enfers, the no-less-famous “Feu partout” from La Vie parisienne or those three bewitching notes from the exquisite Barcarolle in The Tales of Hoffmann? Those melodies, known to all, are part of humanity’s common heritage. They have even been engraved in platinum and sent out into space as ambassadors of our species to potential extra-terrestrial populations...

In addition to singing, our alien friends should also be able to dance. Was it not Offenbach who invented the French cancan in his Gaîté parisienne? Well, no actually! The gallop from Orphée aux enfers is not for a bunch of tricolour legs destined for the cabarets of the Butte Montmartre, it is a fiery, almost frenzied Bacchic dance. As for the Gaîté parisienne, only a few of the melodies in the work were actually drawn from Offenbach’s vast collection, because it was a ballet arranged by the conductor Manuel Rosenthal in… 1938.

Joyful music but a sad fate… It was Jean de La Bruyère who said that in France there is little esteem for people who like to have fun... Joyful music indeed, but a sad fate to be reduced to three hit tunes of which you are not necessarily the composer, especially when you have written over six hundred works including an ample harvest of masterpieces that are still unknown a century and a half later …


Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Opéra national de Paris, 2012
Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Opéra national de Paris, 2012 © Ian Patrick/OnP

Over 130 stage works (a romantic grand opera, Die Rheinnixen, numerous comic operas, opéras bouffes, operettas, and stage music); a few oratorios and cantatas, but also concertos for his own instrument the cello (including a vast “military” concerto), numerous pages of symphonic music, sacred music, chamber music, dance music, melodies, and educational works... While the situation may have evolved over the last two decades, many of these works are still unpublished, or awaiting accurate, restorative editing. Smothered for many years under crude arrangements that fluctuated from the bombastic to the cursory, Offenbach’s work is finally beginning to regain its true dimension having been reconstructed to reflect its genuine musical and dramatic power. The primary aim of the on-going musicological works is to reveal the composer’s true face to the world again.  

So how does one describe Offenbach’s music? It is, in fact, the fruit of a vast culture and an early admiration for great masters like Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Weber. There is also the training from his tutor Fromental Halévy, who wrote the opera La Juive. Then there is his Rhenish and Jewish roots, and his own modern and entirely personal perspective. Verses of an ideal classicism and a “Mozartian” candour, scathing humour, romantic passion, inventive orchestration (created by himself and not some surrogate, as some persistent rumours maintain), skilful harmony… nothing seemed unfamiliar to him. The discourse itself is based upon a highly unique art of “natural contrast”, that is at once obvious and yet surprising; it blends buffoonery and melancholy, tenderness and provocation, discipline and brutality, character study and dance with a wholly unique proficiency.


Les Contes d'Hoffmann - Les oiseaux dans la charmille (air d'Olympia)

His work method is now familiar to us: Firstly, Offenbach noted down the many melodies inspired by the libretto in large notebooks which he always carried with him - some barely legible drafts were even noted down on a table that he had installed in his carriage. It was also fairly common for him to write (musical or literary) annotations directly onto the manuscripts of his librettists. His correspondence with them reveals many secrets as to the way he guided his collaborators. That collaboration was always close and often to the point of becoming invasive and overbearing... He would then take a sheet of music paper intended for instrumentation. First he would note down the vocal lines in the centre, then, on the two lines below he would add a piano accompaniment. Sometimes it would be highly developed; at other times it would be limited. Finally, as soon as he was sure that the piece would be performed, he would begin the task of orchestrating it. To save time, he also used a codified system that, with a little experience, is easy to decipher. Throughout the rehearsals, he would modify or delete certain verses, or passages, and even entire numbers according to his own instincts as a dramatist or the demands of the Paris censorship bureau. We know that Offenbach’s method of orchestration bordered on genius because he was able to balance that task, receive his collaborators in his sitting room and talk with them about something completely different whilst his pen continued to fill the page with his famous scribbled, chicken-scratch handwriting.   

Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Opéra national de Paris, 2012
Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Opéra national de Paris, 2012 © Ian Patrick/OnP

Offenbach used only sixteen musicians at his first venue, the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, but that was only for the first ten works which had their debut performance in the theatre between June and December 1855. It was a reduced “Mozart-like” orchestra. Offenbach would soon be able to take advantage of a larger orchestra pit (after he moved to the Passage Choiseul in December 1855) which could accommodate some thirty instrumentalists. Generally, there are two major types of orchestration for Offenbach’s theatrical works. The first is described above and was used for almost all the works performed in France prior to 1874—together with a few subsequent pieces. Even so, the composer knew how to adapt to the means that different theatres offered him and he did not hesitate to expand his orchestra if he had the opportunity to do so. For more substantial works, like those composed for the Opéra-Comique, the ballets, and more particularly, the extravaganzas and other grand performances staged at the Théâtre de la Gaîté after 1874, Offenbach increased the size of the orchestra. He also did the same for the Viennese versions of most of his works. Did he not once declare that: “I write my music for Paris, but I hear it played in Vienna”?

To continue to claim that Offenbach only produced a single opera seria, The Tales of Hoffmann, at the end of his life as if to apologise for simply being the Second-Empire’s jester and entertainer is both the product of legend and calumny. To believe as much is to ignore Les Fées du Rhin, La Haine (the Victorien Sardou play for which he wrote the music), and Fantasio, not to mention other masterpieces that could not be any more serious. It is also to ignore everything that is scathingly funny in La Belle Hélène, deeply moving in La Périchole, and satirically cruel in La Grande-Duchesse… The legend persists but time marches on. A far more complex, unpredictable Offenbach than the one who amused our forebears is now making a major comeback and nothing seems to be able to stop him, much to the delight of us all.

Jean-Christophe Keck

Jean-Christophe Keck has overseen the monumental Offenbach Edition Keck (OEK Boosey & Hawkes) since 1999 and is regarded as the leading musicologist and specialist on the composer. As a conductor, he has performed and recorded numerous works. A producer at France Musique, he is currently the musical director of the Orchestre de Chambre des Hautes-Alpes, and the Châteaux de Bruniquel Opera Festival. The Festival de Radio France et Montpellier has debuted several of his edited works including Les Fées du Rhin (2003), La Haine (2009), and Fantasio (2015) for which he was also musical advisor.

Les Contes d'Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach
Under the baton of Philippe Jordan, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Ermonela Jaho, Kate Aldrich, Yann Beuron and Ramón Vargas , interpret the legendary airs of this work whose brilliant mystery will continue to dazzle opera houses for countless years to come.

  • Les Contes d'Hoffmann - La légende de Kleinzach
  • Les Contes d'Hoffmann - Les oiseaux dans la charmille (air d'Olympia)
  • Les Contes d'Hoffmann - C'est une chanson d'amour
  • Les Contes d'Hoffmann - Extrait
  • Les Contes d'Hoffmann - Jacques Offenbach

    — By In partnership with France Musique

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Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
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  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

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