Offenbach: Les contes d'Hoffmann
by Brian Large
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Actor: Agnes Baltsa, Claire Powell, Ileana Cotrubas, Luciana Serra, Plácido DomingoDirector: Brian Large
Brand: Kultur
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Italian (Subtitled); Japanese (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Classical, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 159 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-10-14
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kultur Video
DVD Reviews of Offenbach: Les contes d'Hoffmann
DVD Review: Wagner Lite?
Summary: 5 Stars
Hold on, fans and fanatics! I'm not the first to make this comparison. Friedrich Nietzsche, who was well acquainted with Richard Wagner, preferred Offenbach, whom he said provided more musical ideas in one act than Wagner in a whole opera. That would have stood for all time as a shallow judgement if Offenbach had not "gotten down to business" at the end of his life and composed as rich an opera as he was capable of, Les Contes d'Hoffman. In fact he left that work unfinished at his death in 1880; it was completed by his friend Ernest Guiraud. Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) and Richard Wagner (1813-1883) were exact contemporaries, but most of Offenbach's career was devoted to the 'operetta' and other popular musical entertainments, while Wagner - whatever one thinks of his works - always had aspirations toward higher profundities.
Offenbach's orchestra, in Les Contes, is thoroughly Wagnerian, and the 'lightweight' popularist could write very good 'Wagner' when he chose. The vocal lines, however, are more in the deep tradition of French opera, with noticeable inflections of Rameau and the French operas of Gluck. One has to assume that the French language dictates the 'tenor' of French vocal technique. Oddly enough, most of the singers in this wonderful performance are not French, beginning with tenor Placido Domingo, a Spaniard, and the production was staged by the British Royal Opera in Covent Garden in 1981. The handsome young Domingo is breathtakingly good. Three well-known sopranos sing the roles of Hoffmann's three tragic Loves: Luciana Serra as the mannequin Olympia, Agnes Baltsa as the courtesan Giulietta, and Ileana Cotrubas as the doomed artist Antonia. Cotrubas is especially outstanding. The production is lavish. Gorgeous! Opulent, as 'grand' opera still was, in the times before Thatcher and Reagan did their worst to dismantle public support for the arts. The camera work is skillful and unobtrusive, though the film has plainly needed renovation and possibly colorization.
Les Contes d'Hoffmann is a trilogy of ill-fated love stories in three acts, with a short prologue and a shorter epilogue. Nietzsche's perception does apply; each act could have been stretched into a three-hour Lohengrin by Wagner. The libretto is as schmaltzy and melodramatic as any 19th C operetta, with lots of mock-serious symbolism and sorcery. As literature, it's less profound than the fairy tales of Perrault or the Grimm Brothers. Still, are Offenbach's fairy tales any less profound than Wagner's nationalistic neo-Teutonic myths? I'll leave that question in the air... where it belongs.
Les Contes d'Hoffmann used to be performed more often. It was a veritable warhorse of the opera repertoire, but tastes have drifted away from it. The "Germany" it portrays -- the Goliardic Germany, with lusty Student Prince drinking clubs and idealistic Green Henry poets -- was the image of Germany before Bismark, before the Prussian unification and the two World Wars. It's not an image that makes sense to most anglophones any more. But Les Contes is on the bill, this coming summer, at the Santa Fe Opera Festival. See you there?
Description of Offenbach: Les contes d'Hoffmann
LES CONTES D'HOFFMAN - DVD MovieThis is as good a video of the traditional Tales of Hoffmann as we are ever likely to see. It alters the material Offenbach left when he died, but it is the Hoffmann that audiences have loved for decades in a brilliant all-star production. Plácido Domingo is vocally resplendent and theatrically convincing as the poet Hoffmann enduring one amorous disappointment after another. He is supported by a large, expert, international cast, alert to the opera's wit, horror, and pathos.
Particularly outstanding are Luciana Serra, vocally flawless and visually mechanical as the singing robot Olympia; Ileana Cotrubas as Antonia, who sings herself to death; Claire Powell as Hoffmann's partner Niklausse; and all four of the deep-voiced villains. This production departs from Offenbach's evident intentions particularly in the Venetian act, which it places second rather than last and pads out with material Offenbach never included. These additions, however, include some of the best-loved material in the opera. --Joe McLellan
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