Les Contes d'Hoffmann | The South African College of Music

THE TALES OF HOFFMANN

Jacques Offenbach

8 - 10 September 2023

Relive the ill-fated love stories of film-maker Hoffmann, as he entertains a group of students in Luther’s tavern during the interval of Don Giovanni. In Steven Stead’s production, the protagonist describes a mechanical doll, a critically ill opera singer and a Venetian courtesan as he searches for the meaning of love and for himself. Will he draw inspiration for his art from his failure in life? Or will he sink into drunken oblivion? Offenbach’s evocative score conjures up personalities and places with unforgettable melodies and ravishing harmonies.

The title role is shared by Cape Town favourites, Luvo Maranti and Makudu Senaoana. Opera UCT is joined by the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jeremy Silver.

At the Pam Golding Theatre at The Baxter from 8 to 10 September.

PRICE

From R100 to R380
Under 18s FREE but please book tickets early!

VENUE
Pam Golding Theatre at The Baxter

RUNNING TIME
3 hours (including interval)

LANGUAGE
The opera is sung in French with surtitles in English and isiXhosa.

Story

Prologue Act 1 Act 2 Act 3 Epilogue

PROLOGUE

The poet and film-maker Hoffmann is distracted from his creative work as he is in a complicated relationship with Stella, a renowned performer. His Muse appears and declares that she will do everything possible to end Hoffmann’s infatuation so that he can contribute to the world of art. She encourages Hoffmann to drink as a way of freeing his imagination. Lindorf, a rich counsellor, also loves Stella and has intercepted a note she has written to Hoffmann, inviting him to meet her privately after that evening’s performance. Lindorf is confident he will win her for himself. Arriving at Luther’s tavern with a group of students, Hoffmann sings a ballad about a strange little man named Kleinzach. During the song, his mind wanders to recollections of a beautiful woman. When Hoffmann recognizes Lindorf as his rival, the two men trade insults. Hoffmann’s Muse, who has assumed the guise of his friend Nicklausse, interrupts, but the encounter leaves the poet with a sense of impending disaster. When the students ask Hoffmann why he loves Stella, he begins to tell the stories of his three past loves.

ACT ONE

In his workshop in Paris, the eccentric inventor Spalanzani has created a mechanical doll named Olympia. Hoffmann, who thinks the girl is Spalanzani’s daughter, has fallen in love with her. Spalanzani’s former partner Coppélius sells Hoffmann a pair of magic glasses, through which he alone perceives Olympia as human. When Coppélius demands his share of the profits that the two inventors expect to make from the doll, Spalanzani gives him a worthless check. Guests arrive at the laboratory, and Olympia captivates the crowd with the performance of a dazzling aria, which is interrupted several times in order for the doll’s mechanism to be recharged. Oblivious to this while watching her through his glasses, Hoffmann is enchanted. He declares his love, and the two dance. Olympia whirls faster and faster as her mechanism spins out of control. During the melée, Hoffmann’s glasses break. Coppélius, having discovered that the check was worthless, returns in a fury. He grabs Olympia and tears her apart as the guests mock Hoffmann for falling in love with a machine.

ACT TWO

At an elegant home in Munich, the young girl Antonia sings a plaintive love song filled with memories of her dead mother, a famous singer. Her father, Crespel, has taken her away in the hopes of ending her affair with Hoffmann and begs her to give up singing: she has inherited her mother’s weak heart, and the effort will endanger her life. Hoffmann arrives, and Antonia joins him in singing until she nearly faints. Crespel returns, alarmed by the arrival of the charlatan Dr Miracle, who treated Crespel’s wife the day she died. The doctor claims he can cure Antonia, but Crespel accuses him of killing his wife and forces him out. Hoffmann, overhearing their conversation, asks Antonia to give up singing, and she reluctantly agrees. The moment he has left, Miracle reappears, urging Antonia to sing. He conjures up a vision of her mother, who encourages her daughter to relive the glory of her own fame. Antonia can’t resist. Her singing becomes more and more feverish until she collapses. Miracle coldly pronounces her dead.

ACT THREE

At her palazzo in Venice, the courtesan Giulietta joins Nicklausse in singing a barcarolle. A party is in progress, and Hoffmann mockingly praises the pleasures of the flesh. When Giulietta introduces him to her current lover, Schlémil, Nicklausse warns the poet against the courtesan’s charms. Hoffmann denies any interest in her. Having overheard them, the sinister Dapertutto produces a large diamond with which he will bribe Giulietta to steal Hoffmann’s reflection—just as she already has stolen Schlémil’s shadow. As Hoffmann is about to depart, Giulietta seduces him into confessing his love for her. Schlémil returns and accuses Giulietta of having left him for Hoffmann, who realises with horror that he has lost his reflection. Schlémil challenges Hoffmann to a duel and is killed. Nicklausse is determined to get Hoffmann away from Venice at any cost. Dapertutto gives Hoffmann what he calls a sleeping potion to put in Nicklausse’s drink, which would allow Hoffmann to spend more time with Giulietta. Giulietta inadvertently drinks the drink, which turns out to be poisoned. She dies as Hoffmann looks on helplessly.

EPILOGUE

Hoffmann finishes regaling the students with his three tales of lost love just as news of Stella’s triumphant performance reaches the tavern. The students are thrilled by the diva’s success, but at the mention of her name, Hoffmann gets distraught and drinks himself into a stupor. Stella arrives at the establishment, looking for Hoffmann, who she had invited to her boudoir after her performance. She finds him unconscious and inebriated, and is upset. She declares that she is not prepared to be treated so badly, and leaves on Lindorf ’s arm. The tavern empties, and the Muse claims Hoffmann as her own.

Characters

Nicklausse / The Muse

Olympia

Antonia

Giulietta

Lindorf / Dr Miracle

Luther / Coppélius / Crespel

Dapertutto

Spalanzani

Nathanaël

Schlémil

Hermann

Frantz

Antonia’s mother

Pitichinaccio

Cochenille

This Production

The biggest challenge in directing a production of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann isn’t its sprawling structure, nor its inscrutable tone, nor its flights of bizarre fantasy. It is difficult to approach because there are so many versions of this extraordinary work, many of which contradict one another in terms of narrative, character and intention. Offenbach died on the 5 October 1880, four months before his magnum opus was first staged on 10 February 1881. And because he wasn’t around to supervise, the producers made all sorts of unsanctioned changes to his unfinished work: most of the spoken dialogue was replaced with recitative, which made the opera so long that the Venice act was cut from the opera to reduce the running time. The Barcarolle was added into the Antonia act, which was transported geographically from Hamburg to Venice. Over the past 142 years since that performance there has been much conjecture and study, and many attempts to produce a ‘definitive’ version of the score.

The version we have decided to use largely follows one of the early Choudens editions, although we have made some notable alterations, which I hope will make the architecture of the opera more cogent. In solving some of the puzzles this unique piece presents, I have felt compelled to answer a few important questions which are fundamental to tracing a narrative arc through from the start of Prologue to the end of the Epilogue: who exactly is Hoffmann and what is his relationship with Stella? And who is The Muse / Nicklausse, and what is her/his relationship with Hoffmann? It is very confusing, because sometimes she/he is aiding and abetting him, and at others is actively seeking to thwart or mock him.

The character of Hoffmann is a heavily fictionalised version of the real-life German author, Ernest Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, who wrote, amongst many other fantastical works, the three short stories upon which Jules Barbier based his libretto for Offenbach’s opera. Hoffmann died at the age of 46, of syphilis. He was also an alcoholic. So, we have a central character who is based on an actual writer and story- teller, who had a complicated love life, and appears to have had strong self-destructive tendencies.

In the opera, the beautiful diva, Stella, seems to be in love with him, and sends him a letter at the beginning of the opera asking him to visit her in her dressing room and declaring that she loves him. He appears to be obsessed by her in return. But he doesn’t answer her note, nor does he rendezvous with her. Why not? Hoffmann’s Muse appears at the very beginning of the Prologue (well, at least she does in this version; in other versions, we don’t meet her until the Epilogue…) and sings an aria about Stella being her rival: Hoffmann is distracted by Stella, and cannot create when Stella is in his life. The Muse vows to exorcise that particular demon from Hoffmann’s heart, so that he can get back to what The Muse expects of him: writing great works of art.

I have decided to present Hoffmann as a washed-up film director, a contemporary story-teller, and the Muse, is an extension of his psyche: his younger self. The 14-year-old boy that only cared about making movies and telling stories; for whom anything else was unimportant. And to whom the idea of falling in love was absurd, and downright dangerous. This youthful self constantly encourages Hoffmann to drink, to liberate his imagination, and to dedicate his energies to creating art. It is obvious to me that Hoffmann is fearful of a real relationship with a flesh and blood woman, and so avoids the reality of Stella, in favour of his creative re-imaginings of aspects of her personality. And is aided and abetted in this by his Muse, aka Nicklausse.

He ultimately loses Stella to Councillor Lindorff, a powerful, practical, political man with no artistic proclivities. In fact, Lindorff despises poets and other similar ‘degenerates’. He becomes Hoffmann’s nemesis because he is Hoffmann’s antithesis; the Arts Minister who doesn’t understand artists and doesn’t fund their endeavours. Hoffmann uses Lindorff as an inspiration for all the villains of his stories, who are all out to persecute him personally. The rest of the opera is pretty self-evident, with three self-contained stories.

But understanding the relationship between Hoffmann, his Muse, Stella, and Lindorff, is critical to getting a handle on the psychology of the protagonist from

Prologue to Epilogue. We have included the Apotheosis at the end of the opera, when the Muse assures Hoffmann that from the ashes of his heart, his genius will rise up, and that his blessed sacrifice (of his happiness), will give him material from which to create great art.

Whether you feel this is a happy or tragic ending will depend on how important you think creative endeavour is, in the greater scheme of things. Happy musing…!

Steven Stead

Creative Team

More about the composer

Jacques Offenbach (born June 20, 1819, Cologne, Prussia [Germany]—died October 5, 1880, Paris, France) was a composer who created a type of light burlesque French comic opera known as the opérette, which became one of the most characteristic artistic products of the period.

He was the son of a cantor at the Cologne Synagogue, Isaac Juda Eberst, who had been born at Offenbach am Main. The father was known as “Der Offenbacher,” and the composer was known only by his assumed name, Offenbach. Attracted by Paris’s more tolerant attitude toward Jews, Offenbach’s father took him there in his youth, and in 1833 he was enrolled as a cello student at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1844, having been converted to Roman Catholicism, he married Herminie d’Alcain, the daughter of a Spanish Carlist. In 1849, after playing the cello in the orchestra of the Opéra-Comique, he became conductor at the Théâtre Français. In 1855 he opened a theatre of his own, the Bouffes-Parisiens, which he directed until 1866 and where he gave many of his celebrated operettas, among them Orphée aux enfers (1858; Orpheus in the Underworld). He then produced operettas at Ems in Germany and an opéra-ballet in Vienna, Die Rheinnixen (1864; Rhine Spirits). Returning in 1864 to Paris, he produced at the Variétés his successful operetta La Belle Hélène (1864). Other successes followed, including La Vie Parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), and La Périchole (1868). From 1872 to 1876 he directed the Théâtre de la Gaîté, and in 1874 he produced there a revised version of Orphée aux enfers. Described then as an opéra-féerique (“a fairylike opera”), this venture was a financial failure. In 1876 he made a tour of the United States. The remaining years of his life were devoted to composition.

His only grand opera, Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann), remained unfinished at his death. It was orchestrated and provided with recitatives by Ernest Guiraud, who also introduced the famous barcarolle taken from Die Rheinnixen. Described as an opéra-fantastique, it was first produced at the Opéra-Comique on February 10, 1881. Gaîté Parisienne, a suite of Offenbach’s music arranged by Manuel Rosenthal, remains a popular orchestral work as well as ballet score.

Offenbach is credited with writing in a fluent, elegant style and with a highly developed sense of both characterization and satire (particularly in his irreverent treatment of mythological subjects); he was called by Gioachino Rossini “our little Mozart of the Champs-Elysées.” Indeed, he was almost as prolific as Mozart. He wrote more than 100 stage works, many of which, transcending topical associations, were maintained in the repertory of the 21st century.