Wagging the Tale
La Cieca’s saturation coverage of the Met’s new Contes d’Hoffmann begins officially on Monday, when one of her most reliable and most devious spies promises a report from the dress rehearsal. You, the cher public, will be expected to sound off loud and clear during the opening night chat on Thursday at 8:00 pm. And, ça va sans dire, one of parterre’s crack team of critics from the New York beat will file a definitive review just as soon after the final curtain as his little paws can type. In the meantime, here’s a teensy preview of the show:
Sher will get what he deserves: a one way ticket back to Seattle.
well that clip left in a hurry.
mezzavoce: pimply-faced? pourquoi??? just repeating what I heard..or saw- ie an email.
Based on my personal experience with local movie theater managers.
The only way your info makes sense is if it was about the long-ago announced cast of Netrebko, Villazon, and Pape.
But, at your local multiplex, who knows any of these names at all? And who would care about an incorrect cast announcement (”Oh my God, Garanca isn’t singing Nicklausse, I want my money back!”).
what amazing condescension and bile in response to my post! not that it matters but it’s not a multiplex, nor a manager but the very savvy owner of an independent theater, with an informed and avid opera audience. not all opera lovers live in Manhattan .
and the cast change notice came Nov 26
The Tales of Hoffmann is such messed construction and yet people are al trying to make it ‘authentic’. It is akin to a composer putting together ‘a new Broadway show’ and ripping bits & pieces out of other shows they did in the past- then adding & telling everyone it is a completely new show -the masterpiece people have been waiting for. This opera should be renamed…Scenes from Hoffmann’s Life.
The Character himself is like any drunk: they tell you ‘their life story’. Does it matter in what sequence it is told? Do we not form or come to the same final conclusions and judgments about what is actually being told? Are they really separate women or observed symbolic rejigged parts of the personality of just one, as seen by Hoffmann? The Olympia doll sequence is certainly not in touch with reality as we know it, on any level of comprehension. If we swallow his credibility on his temporary believability about Olympia, he is but stupid and a complete imbecilic clown to start with. Why care then, about any more of his supposed re-occurring ‘misfortunes’?
I have always found the casting of different singers in the main female roles …extremely jarring. IMHO I find it then becomes an Offenbach all star variety show. They might as well throw in scenes from say his ‘First Man on the Moon ‘,then perhaps a ballet ‘being so French’ or from other confections he wrote. All these latest conflicting editions of the work could have the opposite effect intended. A case of ‘Tales of Hoffmann…whose Hoffmann are we talking about?…There are so many!’
The fact is that there IS an authentic version of “Hoffmann” – a version most people don’t know about. Until the supposedly lost pages of rehearsal materials from the premiere were recovered (including lots of music cut after Offenbach’s death and just weeks before the premiere – mostly due to cast changes and events of that nature – not because anyone actually felt these cuts “improved” the work)we’ve been able to reconstruct almost exactly how Offenbach viewed the opera at the time of his death.
I do not blame anyone who is only familiar with the traditional version of the opera for finding the plot to be loosely constructed and nearly incomprehensible. But do not blame Barbier or Offenbach – blame the many editors and revisers who tried to second guess the opera’s creators. Many later editors (particularly Oeser)DID choose to recycle other music by Offenbach to make it more understandable (Oeser added over thirty minutes of music from Offenbach’s “Rheinnixen” to the Giulietta act, set to his own text), but these are hardly “authentic”. Finding the “authentic Hoffmann” is not a matter of adding new music or re-arranging the numbers – it is about going back to the sources and letting these sources speak for themselves. And they speak pretty damned well.
As far as the ordering of the acts – Barbier and Carre ordered them as Olympia-Antonia-Giulietta in their 1851 play “Les contes d’Hoffmann” and they did this for a reason. It’s very carefully thought out. The trajectory is from idealistic love for a non-responsive being (Olympia) to passionate love for a being who is too self obsessed or so fully inhabited by her art that she cannot give herself wholly (Antonia) to a rather degenerate sexual passion for a whore who eventually steals the lover’s soul (Giulietta), leaving him, seemingly, with nothing — or so he thinks. If we look at it this way – if we see Antonia not as a twin sister to Mimi but as a complex diva who cannot accept a life outside of art (Malfitano played her this way – as neurotic and obsessed – showing that she really understood what the character was all about)
and Giulietta as the deeply evil culmination of all three – the final step in a downward spiral, then it all makes much more sense. The acts are not like toy blocks that can be re-arranged to the director’s liking (Cherau oddly ordered them Giulietta-Olympia-Antonia)– they are in this order for dramatic reasons, and the sense is lost if they are re-arranged.
I’m not trying to convince people who do not like this work that they are somehow “wrong”. Over the course of my study of this opera I’ve met plenty of people who have told me that it’s a favorite and others who have dismissed it as drivel. That’s personal opinion, and I respect it. But give the thing a chance to live in the theater as it was meant to.
Speaking of cast changes and theater posters for film opera performances. I have a one off color poster depicting Placido Domingo on the Castel San d Angelo in Tosca, below it is the supposed cast list….starring Hermann Prey, Teresa Berganza etc.???
The distributor was also handling the showing of The Barber of Seville and other operas. He got his cast lists for the poster wrong. Seemingly unaware of the mistake: as they already then, were being displayed in theater glass showcases. The distributor gave thanks: by offering (when I suggested it) to save just one of the posters for me, since he wanted to quickly collect and destroy all the embarrassing others. I had this unique gift copy- then laminated.