Ensembles: Opera

MSU Opera Theatre and Symphony Orchestra presented Jacques Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, Spring 2006

EAST LANSING, Mich., March 29, 2006 – MSU College of Music Opera Theatre and MSU Symphony Orchestra presented Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, Friday, March 31 – April 2 in the MSU Concert Auditorium.

Melanie Helton, assistant professor of voice and director of Opera Theatre, was stage director for the production and Rafael Jimenez, assistant professor of conducting and associate conductor of MSU Orchestras, conducted the MSU Symphony Orchestra. With music by Jacques Offenbach and libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, the opera, which was sung in French with English surtitles, is based on the stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Offenbach was famous in the Paris of the mid-19th century as a composer for popular theatre.

“Premiering in Paris at the Opéra-Comique in 1881, four months after the death of Offenbach,” said Helton, “Tales of Hoffmann is a staple of the operatic repertoire even today, serving as a great vehicle for star tenors, sopranos, and bass-baritones.”

Hoffmann, himself an accomplished composer, painter, and set designer as well as poet, is the protagonist in this collection of three tales based on actual Hoffmann stories: The Sandman, The Lost Reflection in the Mirror, and Councillor Krespel. The opera begins with a drunken Hoffmann in a tavern, awaiting his love, the great diva Stella. His rival for Stella’s affections, Councillor Lindorf, plots to make sure Hoffmann does not meet with Stella that evening. Students pour into the tavern during intermission of Don Giovanni and urge Hoffmann to tell them one of his magical stories. He tells the stories of his three loves (depicted in Acts I, II and III).

There is a strong supernatural element to each of these stories. Hoffmann, accompanied by a young man named Nicklausse (actually Hoffmann’s poetic muse masquerading in earthly form), revisits the events of the so-called loves of his life: the artist (Olympia, a mechanical doll), the siren (Giuletta, a Venetian courtesan and friend to the devil), and the young girl (Antonia, the singer doomed by illness). In each of these love affairs, Hoffmann fails to see what is in front of his — that all of these women are completely unavailable to him. The muse knows this, saving Hoffmann for his poetry.