All dolled up
When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
8 pieces since 2010.
8
pieces
17
years
Coming out a head
On this day in 1958 soprano Inge Borkh made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Salome (paired, of all things, with Gianni Schicchi)
Outsider
Born on this day in 76 AD Roman Emperor Hadrian.
May contain nuts
Mark Morris’ saucy, psychedelic The Hard Nut has returned to the Brooklyn Academy of Music yet again this week for its 27th Christmas since the ballet premiered in Brussels.
Tales that witness madness
Jacques Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann has had a bumpy ride to its pride of position in the current French repertoire.
C’est une chanson d’amour qui somnole
What is surreal, symbolic, and generally mysterious in the dramatic arts can get a bad rap.
One from the vault
There has never been a successful vampire musical—so they say. But that’s just not true.
Fails of Hoffmann
In 1804, E.T.A. Hoffmann became acquainted with Schlegel’s translations of Spanish plays in Spanisches Theater. During an illness in 1807, he returned to the Schlegel and discovered Calderon’s Die Scharpe und die Blume, finding it an ideal operatic subject. He composed the opera in Warsaw and Berlin, and began seeking a theatre that would present […]