Hoffmanns Erzählungen

Live performance Bayerische Staatsoper 2011 The Tales of Hoffmann French LES CONTES DHOFFMANN is an opéra fantastique by Jacques Offenbach that combines three short stories by ETA Hoffmann into a haunting whole a melancholy poet reflects on three women he loved and lost in the past a mechanical performing doll a Venetian courtesan and the consumptive daughter of a celebrated composer One of the questions this opera poses for any director is how to link the tales of Hoffmanns three lost loves together and knit them satisfactorily into the Prologue and Epilogue In this production Richard Jones solves the puzzle by turning it into an autobiographical journey which ends with a grand meetup of all the characters Hoffmann has encountered for once Hoffmann is not presented as a rollicking kind of drunken storyspinner but rather a sadeyed soberedup depressive who reaches for the bottle only because his disastrous love life has gone wrong yet again