SUMMER SONATA – A FESTIVAL OF OPERA AND BALLET FILMS
This year the festival presents operas, ballets, a ballet biography and choral works
Curated and introduced by Dr. R.P. Jain
Jacques Offenbach: The Tales of Hoffmann
(150 min; 1981; dvd; English subtitles)
The Royal Opera, Covent Garden
Conductor: Georges Pretre
With Placido Domingo (Hoffmann), Luciana Serra (Olympia), Agnes Balsta (Giulietta), Ileana Cotrubas (Antonia)
Offenbach’s ‘fantastic’ grand opera, The Tales of Hoffmann (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), is based on tales by the German writer, E.T.A. Hoffmann. In a tavern in Nuremberg, the drunken poet, Hoffmann, is lamenting his failed love life, and how it’s all caused by his rival, the Councillor Lindorf. He tells his fellow-drinkers about his three past loves, three personifications of the same woman – Olympia, the ‘daughter’ of an inventor, who turns out to be a doll; a courtesan, Giulietta, who is under the spell of a sorcerer; Antonia, a sick girl who is lured into singing herself to death by the evil Dr. Miracle. An opera about an artist’s hopes and disappointments, in a fantasy world that is both romantic yet grotesque
