Offenbach: Les Contes D'hoffmann

It would be hard to find an opera in any area of the repertory that presents so many textual problems as Les conies d'Holfmann, largely stemming from the fact that the composer died four months before the premiere early in 1881, leaving the score incomplete. The traditional text, bringing in extra material, much of it unauthentic, and leaving out a lot, was only established this century. Arthur Hammond with the Carl Rosa Company was a pioneer in attempting to sort out a more acceptable text, and his work formed the basis of the English National Opera production at the Coliseum and also the Richard Bonynge recording for Decca. Since then the discovery of no less than 1,250 autograph pages allowed Fritz Oeser to produce his monumental edition, as used extensively in the Cambreling recording for EMI (12/88 —nla)…

Sylvain Cambreling is one of the leading French operatic conductors. He is known for his often startling innovations in many opera productions: in a performance of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the 2001 Salzburg Festival he employed a synthesizer to deliver recitative accompaniments, and at a performance of Janácek's Katya Kabanova, he used some of the composer's songs as transitional material between acts.

Les Contes d’Hoffmann is a great, unfinished masterpiece. In 1880 Hoffenbach’s health began to deteriorate rapidly. Les Contes d’Hoffmann had already been programmed for the 1880/81 season of the Opéra-Comique but Offenbach was having a hard time finishing it and worked only in the moments of respite from his illness…

Jacques Offenbach was the composer of many operettas that satirized life in 19th century France, many of which are still popular. "Tales of Hoffman" was his last work and his only "serious" opera, and Offenbach died before completing it. This has lead to several "final" versions which is of interest primarily to musicologists.

Offenbach's masterpiece, based on three stories by the German author E.T.A. Hoffmann, is both a three-act opera and a trilogy of taut, individual dramas, all rolled into one.This Geneva production from 2002 features baritone Marc Laho in the tour-de-force triple villain roles, with three different standout sopranos as the tales' three heroines. French producer Olivier Py caused an uproar among Geneva operagoers with a staging of Tales of Hoffmann that features full-frontal male and female nudity and simulated on-stage lesbian and heterosexual sex.

Le concept des Contes Interdits est imaginé par Simon Rousseau en 2014, alors qu'il n'était pas encore publié chez ADA. Inspiré par le jeu vidéo ''A Wolf Among Us'', les comics Fables, le roman Aliss et les très nombreuses adaptations cinématographiques de nos contes d'enfance, il imagine un collectif dans lequel de nombreux auteurs réécrivent divers contes classiques et les transforment en romans d'horreur pour adultes, le tout avec des personnages et décors québécois. …