I can’t decide which is my favourite opera: Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame or Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Weirdly, two operas where the tenor is the loser/anti-hero. Whereas Tchaikovsky’s harrowing thriller is set in stone and has a few great performances (although all my favourites are non-commercial), Offenbach’s trippy nightmare of various women dying on Hoffmann’s touch is, as we all know, a veritable shit show editorially. If I did pick this as my only opera at least I’d have 8 or 9 utterly different versions purporting to be the same work.

I’ve got the Keck Hoffmann bible, I’ve waded through longer and longer editions with arias swapped, chopped, or dropped. I’ve suffered the naff happy chorus ending, been entranced by new material while simultaneously missing what I first knew and loved. I confess I love the corrupt Choudens edition of Hoffmann more than any flight of fancy from Bonynge, Oeser, or Keck.

Somehow, I’ve ended up with all of EMI Hoffmanns: both Cluytens, the scholarly but discredited Cambreling version, and this: Heinz Wallberg’s EMI Electrola set from 1979, probably my favorite all-around, no-nonsense Hoffmann despite being sung in the wrong language.

I could have picked the English language Powell and Pressburger/Beecham Hoffmann film for this Gained in Translation thread, for it reaches the macabre, dark heart of this opera more than any other but the score and vocals really are torn to pieces. No, auf Deutsch makes so much sense given that the Prologue, Antonia Act and Epilogue are set in Nuremburg and Munich and that both Offenbach and ETA Hoffmann were German. The Grimms fairy tale feel to this opera is so much more pungent than when performed in French.

This Electrola studio recording of Hoffmanns Erzahlungen is a note-complete rendition of the Choudens score including all the repeats, such as in the end chorus of the Olympia. Now, I bought it because I am a Fischer-Dieskau nut (which on Parterre, I know, is like having an STI. Worse, I am a super fan of him in opera; Italian, French or German.) He’s objectively terrific in this, in great voice for 1979, characterizing each baddie as gruff bastard, insinuating creep, creepy magical pimp, and Dr. Erlking. The latter is sung opposite his 4th wife, Julia Varady, who is a splendidly anxious but impetuous Antonia. All the women are great, although only Jeanette Scovotti (Olympia) would have had a chance doing all female roles.

I doubt I’ll sell this to you on Fischer-Dieskau. He’s great but not the best thing about this Hoffmanns Erzaehlungen: Siegfried Jerusalem is the standout. I was a teen in the 1990s when I purchased this set on a German outing and I only knew Jerusalem as a gruff, chain-smoking Heldentenor who sounded a bit breathless when compared to Windgassen et al from the Golden Age. I got the shock of my life hearing this. In 1979 Jerusalem was a very different animal, retrained from being a bassoonist, with a sappy, gorgeous fresh tenor that recalls Fritz Wunderlich. Listen to the clip if you think that is hyperbole. Then looks at the rest of the cast: Kurt Moll, Friedrich Lenz, Hanna Schwarz! Conducted with real drive by Heinz Wallberg. Yes, you miss the champagne sparkle and lilt of the best French versions but look at what you gain by hearing these grizzly tales in ETA Hoffmann’s own language. Buy it now, I say.