Offenbach Les contes dHoffmann

Product Description Based on the stories of the influential German writer ETA Hoffmann, and filled with magic yet darkly grotesque humor, Les Contes d'Hoffmann has a complex structure with three acts in 'flashback' as the drunken poet Hoffmann recalls three unhappy love affairs. The opera itself has a complex history too, since Offenbach died before completing it and it exists in a number of editions. The performance used in the version prepared by Michael Kaye and Jean-Christophe Keck has been welcomed for its dramatic power. This production looks unusually dark and sober, while the monumental elements of the decor move smoothly around the singers and dominate them in sinister fashion. Natalie Dessay performs the role of Antonia, a young, physically fragile woman whose talent, singing, ultimately proves fatal to her. The automaton Olympia is sung by the charming coloratura soprano Kathleen Kim, while the Venetian courtesan Olympia is embodied by the sensual mezzo-soprano Tatiana Pavlovskaya. The elegant Canadian mezzo-soprano Michèle Losier plays the role of the loyal friend, Nicklausse, and Hoffmann's nemesis, who takes the form of four different characters, is incarnated by the French bass-baritone Laurent Naouri, with Hoffmann himself sung by the young American tenor Michael Spyres. Review Natalie Dessay's voice is as distinctive as they come these days, a high, bell-clear but unusually colourful coloratura soprano, with apparently no limits to its virtuosity. --ClassicFM