The Tales of Hoffmann (Les contes d'Hoffmann)

Synopsis

Hopelessly besotted with a flighty prima donna, The Tales of Hoffman is the story of a drunken poet recalling the three loves of his life: Olympia, a mechanical doll; Antonia, a sick young singer; and Giulietta, a Venetian whore who stole his reflection and his soul.

Based upon the fantastical tales of the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, Offenbach’s score of The Tales of Hoffman includes the clockwork-driven Doll’s Song and the seductively swooning Barcarolle.

With its phantasmagorical blurring of dreams and reality, The Tales of Hoffmann is perfectly suited to the imagination of director Richard Jones, back at ENO after his Olivier Award-nominated Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci in 2008.

The cast of The Tales of Hoffman includes Barry Banks as the lovelorn hero and the young American soprano Georgia Jarman as all three of Hoffmann’s lost loves.

Our Review:

Keith McDonnell - 10 February 2012

If an opera contains elements of the macabre, there’s one director that all savvy opera bosses will want to engage to deliver the goods - namely the brilliantly subversive Richard Jones. I’ve never felt short-changed by any of his stagings, but he is in his element when working with material that has supernatural overtones and diabolical undertones. Those whose memories stretch back to the early nineties will remember his wonderfully bizarre ‘scratch ‘n’ sniff’ staging of Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges, designed by the curiously obtuse Brothers Quay, so when faced with the thornier challenge of Offenbach’s often sprawling grand opera concoction, The Tales of Hoffmann, Jones would seem the natural choice to make sense of this uneven work.

He doesn’t disappoint as this staging, first seen in Munich last autumn, is a triumph of wit, invention and the macabre. Within Giles Cadle’s ingenious set, ...

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