[.ca] Offenbach, Jacques: Des Contes D Hoffman

From Amazon.com:
This is not quite the most controversial opera video recording of our time (that title would probably go to Valery Gergiev's 1993 Kirov production of Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel), but it is a strong contender. It has, in one package, two tendencies that give special creative tensions to opera production in our time: the musicians' imperative for fidelity to the composer's intentions, and the stage director's impulse to use the story, characters, sets, costumes, etc., as springboards for his own creative imagination. Jacques Offenbach's last opera (his only grand opera) is specially vulnerable to such tensions because he died before finishing it. Musically, some of the opera's best-loved moments (notably the bass aria "Scintille, diamant") were cobbled together (using melodic material from other Offenbach works) after Offenbach's death. This production, the first video recording based on the new, critical performing score prepared by musicologist Michael Kaye, omits those beloved, spurious numbers. They are missed, but it's hard to complain about the omission of inauthentic material. In any case, conductor Kent Nagano has assembled a superb cast that does the music full vocal justice--most notably Natalie Dessay, Gabriel Bacquier, and Jose Van Dam. While Nagano works hard to respect Offenbach's intentions, stage director Louis Erlo runs roughshod over them, so much so that at Kaye's suggestion the production's title was changed from The Tales of Hoffmann to Some Tales of Hoffmann. Offenbach's original treatment takes place in four European cities where Hoffmann fights the same implacable enemy through one doomed love affair after another. In this production, the locale shrinks to one location--a symbol-infested mental hospital. This fits the feverish, surreal atmosphere of E.T.A. Hoffmann's stories and Offenbach's imaginative musical treatment, but many patrons have found the staging offensive--as is their right. I find it often stimulating, but I would not want it to be the only Hoffmann on my shelf. --Joe McLellan

Vaguely Hoffmann:
I was relieved (it's not so bizarre, grotesque as these other reviewers say) and mildly entertained. Though the music is sublime, beautiful, this version makes even less sense than the original. And if I hadn't known the original, I would have been hopelessly lost. I was anyway. It had some effective moments, particularly the draping of the corpse of Antonia's mother over Antonia's shoulders, in fact that whole story was wonderful I thought. The story of Olympia who in this version was called a mechanical doll but was actually a girl in braces who when she first stood could barely walk was, frankly, I thought, in very poor taste. Guilietta's part made no sense at all, it doesn't in the original to me either, but particularly not in this nonsense. The stories are arranged Olympia, Antonia, Guilietta. I won't give away the ending which I didn't understand anyway, I disliked the "modern" vocal sound effects that showed up towards the end, and the last words of the opera were inaudible, but fortunately there were subtitles, for all the good they did. There were no sets at all, it ran 2 hours with no intermission, the costumes were contemporary dress, I have only the reviewers here to assure me that it all happened in a mental hospital, it was a trip, kept my interest, but like most "modern art," was more of a curiosity than something to care about. It had no feeling whatsoever. But the music was grand. By the way, the reviewer who lambasts the old (old is new to someone) and calls it in bad grammar and all lower case "conservative," said nothing I remember about the opera at hand. And no one in his right mind who knows me would ever call me "conservative." I don't even like to say the word. But being old doesn't make a thing bad, just as being new doesn't ipso facto make it good. Look at "modern verse." But like the lower case reviewer who relishes all things new and despises all things old, I also think art is about dead, but not through want of novelty. Through want of genius. But that always was rare. And there has been a lot of it in Western music since Bach. Oh. I almost forgot. I for one did not think the tenor who sang Hoffmann was that outstanding. He was almost good enough, but I thought his loves were better.

Interesting but it's not Offenbach:
If you think that you are getting Offenbach's opera, think again. This modernistic production which seems to be set in a madhouse bears only the faintest relationship to Les Contes D'Hoffman. (Hence the title Des Contes.) If I didn't hear the music I would think I was watching a staging of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Marat/Sade. It remined me of a production of Rienzi I saw where everyone was clad in camoflauge? Where were the visuals to go with the grand music? And where in this version of Offenbach is the charm, the beauty, and the humor that goes with this music? Is it really doing composers a service to mask their intentions and create incongruous crap in the name of invention and eschew convention? I felt as one who sits down to dine on Beef Wellington on fine china and is served hamburger on paper plates.

Flawed, misguided production, but beautifully sung:
It is a shame that this video recording is the only visual representation of Michael Kaye's outstanding new edition of Offenbach's masterpiece currently available. As most are aware, this great (and I truly mean great) work was orphaned even before its birth, and since then has survived and been trundled out in mutilated versions, with much of Offenbach's original music cut and some numbers added by other hands. It is perhaps a tribute to the work's masterful score and fascinatingly literate libretto that, even in this form, it has gained immense popularity all over the world. The almost miraculous discoveries in the 80's and 90's of hundreds of pages of original Offenbach manuscript have now made it possible to finally re-construct, as best we can, what Offenbach's original intentions were, and has made it even more vital than ever that this work be seen not as some flouncy-bouncy fantasy opera with pretty tunes, but an immense music drama, on a par with Bizet's "Carmen" or Berlioz' "Les Troyens". So then, why use Kaye's edition and then almost simultaneously de-construct it by truncating it (omitting half of the fourth and the entirety of the fifth acts)and pairing it with a production that counters Offenbach's vision at every step? While I'm not against a fresh look at a masterpiece, this production provides, in my opinion, nothing new to set one thinking, and seems to toss out all the main points of the work: the Muse's struggle for Hoffman's love, the sacrifice of mortal happiness for artistic immortality, the fact that "love makes a man great, but tears make him immortal". This is all gone in this production. And the omission of Offenbach's original finale/apotheosis which had languished for almost a hundred years, completely unknown and unheard, is a crime. Not that I'm longing for the old-style, glitzy Met productions that saw the work as nothing more than a vehicle for an outing of star singers. It is time to re-think this work, but on Offenbach's terms. This work has suffered enough, it is time it was vindicated by a thoughtful production which explores its depth but does no dis-service to the original. The singing, however, is excellent; but if that's all that interests, I would suggest buying Nagano's recording of the opera which features many of the same cast members (with the welcome addition of Alagna as Hoffman) and presents the score in its entirety.

attn: classical fundamentalists!:
the classical fundamentalists are as annoying and as harmful as christian fundamentalists. why? because, like the religious fundamentalists the 'classical crowd' has become so conservative, so insistent on the 'sacred word' that they are, in affect, killing the future of artmusic. and that, is what classical music and jazz really is; artmusic. interpetation is an art within itself. the plague that was toscanini had devestating affects that we are still struggling to recover from today. and the result is that classical music is in its death throes. where are the current composers? oh, we have knussen, salonen, saaarhio making small dents, but that is all. it was less than a mere hundred years ago that debussy, ravel, stravinsky, milhuad, bartok, shoenberg, berg, and webern caught our attention. but, that is past. no one today can make that type of impact and the fault lies at the very feet of the medium's 'fans'. in film and theatre we have seen new retellings of hamlet, midsummers nights dream and etc, but even that group's conservative adherents pale in comparison to the plethora of conservatives in classical music. numerous complaints spring up every time a leonard bernstein or pierre boulez type interpets a piece in a subjective light, although even karajan,despite what is claimed, was a subjectivist. today it seems only the incresingly dull levine is 'acceptable'. mahler, kubelik, and klmeperer all attached themselves to new music and all met obstacles in the toscanini corrupted states. and the recording industry is replete with play it safe thinkers as well. do we need another beethoven cycle? even boulez is now recording much recorded music. peter sellars and group did some innovative films of the mozart duponte operas years ago. those have long been out of circulation and its doubtful that they will be seeing the light of day any time soon. barenboim and kupfer did a superb, abstract parsifal and ring cycle that have inexplicably vanished. barenboim and chereau did a (by all accounts) startling wozzeck that has never made its way to the states. yet we can find any levine la boheme or magic flute on dvd, vhs, laser disc, etc in any tower records. and still, the sales, even on levines output is miniscule. mainly because theyre dull, flat, and unimaginative. if the recording industry and 'fans' could find it within themsleves to take a chance on new music and new interpetations on the old chestnuts, then perhaps the death of artmusic would not be so imminent. but, from the reactions i have seen on amazon towards innovative interpetations (like this one), i am not optimistic.

WHAT?!:
I can't believe anyone would give anything less than 5 stars for this DVD. If you don't like the way it's done, then you need to wake up. This is how opera should be...entertaining! Love, Chris