Thursday was another day of miserable weather in New York City as several inches of snow fell in Manhattan. As a result, the Met Opera was emptier that evening than I can ever remember having seen it. I would estimate the house was only one third full. Those who were hardy enough to brave the elements, however, were handsomely rewarded as they watched James Levine conduct a vivid performance of Les Contes d'Hoffman, a work I hadn't seen in more than twenty years. I still remember that last performance because it featured Plácido Domingo singing with Samuel Ramey.
Hoffman was the final work by Jacques Offenbach, better known during his lifetime for the huge number of operettas he composed. His most famous works in this genre were La vie parisienne (1866) and Orphée aux enfers (1858). It was for the second act of the latter that Offenbach wrote the tune Galop infernal which gained notoriety on its own as the music for the infamous "can-can" dance. Through these operettas the composer came to be as deeply associated with the popular image of nineteenth century Paris as was the artist Toulouse-Lautrec. But it was Hoffman, not premiered until four months after his death in 1880, that was to be Offenbach's greatest achievement.
It is interesting to speculate why Offenbach so radically changed direction near the very end of his life after he had already become enormously successful composing operettas. The answer most probably lay in the vast cultural and political disruptions that followed the Franco-Prussian War. Offenbach's music had always been closely associated with the opulent lifestyle that had characterized the Second Empire. After France's bitter military defeat, not only did these lighthearted operettas immediately fall out of favor but Offenbach too, as both a Jew and a German, found himself ostracized by those who once flocked to hear his work. Reinventing himself as a composer of serious opera may have seemed to him the only way to salvage his career.
The opera is, of course, based on the fantastic tales of the eponymous E.T.A. Hoffman who, besides being a writer, was also a composer of some note. His stories are still in print, even if not so often read today, and in their own time were extraordinarily influential. The French in particular idolized Hoffman in much the same way they had that other author of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. Not only was this opera based on Hoffman's stories but so also were the ballets The Nutcracker and Coppélia. The stories' popularity owed a great deal to the fantastic content that reflected perfectly the Romantic sentiments of the age. The three tales used in this opera had previously been adapted in a play, Les contes fantastiques d'Hoffmann, by librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré who had also collaborated on the libretto for Gounod's Faust. By the time the libretto for Hoffman came to be written Carré had died and Barbier became the sole librettist. The titles of the stories used were Der Sandmann ("The Sandman"), Rath Krespel ("Councillor Krespel") and Das verlorene Spiegelbild ("The Lost Reflection").
Though Hoffman's own life was not quite as sensational as that of his namesake narrator, it was still quite adventurous enough. It may have been his achievements in music, though, that attracted Offenbach's attention. Not only had Hoffman composed both instrumental and vocal music, he had also authored several seminal works of musical criticism.
In spite of the difficulty I had getting there, I very much enjoyed Thursday evening's performance. Levine, as usual, was masterful on the podium and here had the assistance of some very able singers. Of the three heroines, I thought the best was Audrey Luna in the role of Olympia. Matthew Polenzani was excellent as Hoffman as was Karine Deshayes as Nicklausse. The production. which originally premiered in 2009, was directed by Bartlett Sher and was exceptionally well done. The first and third acts, with their lavish sets, were especially notable.
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