Featured photo: Kino
The cinema has always been a good place to escape from everyday life. And if you want to be alone, you can watch films that are more artistically valuable - at least in Heilbronn, that works quite well.
Yesterday's event marked the start of this year's "The Met: Live in HD“ season, which has now become a real family event. People from all over the world sit in a cinema, and some may even be in the Metropolitan Opera itself, and watch the same piece at almost the same time. And after the opera, the day ends for some, while others are just starting it; there is hardly a better way to sit together!
To start this year's season, the organizers have chosen "Les Contes D'Hoffman", an opera by Jacques OffenbachThe opera, first performed by Offenbach in Paris in 1851, is based on various stories ETA Hoffmans, although I consider it important for the opera that Hoffmann became famous for his “ghost stories”.
“Les Contes D'Hoffman” is almost one of the great operas, said yesterday Marco Armiliato, the conductor of this performance. Incidentally, this performance was the 500th piece he conducted at the Met, so his opinion certainly carries weight. I would have been very interested to know whether it was also his favorite version of the opera and how much he had to say about this compilation. The fact that the opera is indeed one of the more famous is underlined by the fact that even I could hum along to two or three arias. But at least this opera is among the thirty most frequently performed, which certainly allows conclusions to be drawn about its popularity with the public.
Since there are different adaptations and versions of the opera, I expected the Met performance to either be an adapted version of the original or to be confronted with an adaptation that is accepted by experts as exemplary. Unfortunately, I still don't know which one I saw yesterday; I also couldn't find any information in the explanations that accompany the Met Live in HD performances.
And so I'll try my hand at my own review. The main difference between the performances is probably the question of whether it is performed in three acts, but with a prologue and epilogue, or in five acts. The Met has opted for the former. Then there is the question of the order in which Hoffmann's three loves appear. Here they opted for the mainstream, but chose a separate singer for each of the three loves: Erin Morely Olympia was, for me, the best singer of the evening. Pretty Yende played Antonia and, quite logically, also Stella. Clémentine Margaine played Giuletta and was probably, in my opinion, the worst of these three singers. Since a single singer would probably be over-taxed with these three roles nowadays, I fully understood this arrangement; but I had secretly hoped that the Met Pretty Yende also appears as Antonia's mother - which the technicians would certainly have managed.
Again, quite naturally, Christian VanHorn all four villains, which he is very good at and, according to his own statement, he loves to play. I was allowed Christian VanHorn already in 2022 in Lucia di Lammermoor and have enjoyed listening to it ever since. This time, too, it did not disappoint.
The real villain of the play is Hoffmann's muse, who also plays a very bad role for him as his friend Nicklausse. This role was probably given purely by chance to a Russian singer Vasilisa Berzhanskaya occupied — the Anna Netrebko is currently on the road as a troop supervisor. Vocally, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya but a joy, even if she denied me my favorite song of the piece, which she sang together with Clémentine Margaine sang, completely ruined.
Benjamin Bernheim, which the ETA Hoffman gave, probably next to Erin Morely the best singer of the evening.
At the end of the piece Barlett Sher, who staged the opera, put the choir back in the foreground, which is a very good ending for the audience but ETA Hoffman might not do it justice; I found the ending of the piece just too pleasing.
The stage design of Michael Yeargan I liked it quite a bit and the costumes from Catherine Zuber were a real feast for the eyes.
Since there were performances of the opera a few years ago that were considered too frivolous, which can happen when a courtesan (Giuletta) is involved in the third act, Barlett Sher not only for the fact that ballet dancers also participated in the gymnastic exercises shown, but also for the occasional slapstick. One of them comes from Disneyland in Anaheim. Here, Sher has included a very well-known scene from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme ride - I just love the Metropolitan Opera for little gimmicks like this!
In the second act Barlett Sherthat she, like me, is a fan of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, a musical comedy that Ken Hughes staged in 1968 and is still shown on television today; by the way, the book of the same name was written by Ian Fleming written.
Barlett Shers Olympia is a copy of the one that penetrated the castle there. Truly Scrumptious, which in the film by Sally ann howes is played. In any case, Erin Morely, which Olympia gave, was well worth listening to, and I had to regret again that I simply could no longer follow her flights of fancy - what a voice!
“Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour,
Jules Barbier, excerpt from “Barcarolle”
'Sourse to our hearts,
Night softer than the day,
“O beautiful night of love!”
“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” – a British production by UA and not Disney, as is often believed. Nevertheless, the main actor Dick van Dyke, who will celebrate his 100th birthday next year, is one of the main actors in both productions and the music and libretto are also written by the Sherman brothers. Chitty has more in common with James Bond and the daring men (Fröbe, Hill, Llewelyn, ...). "From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success" - it's a matter of honor that every engineer has this DVD on their shelf. And it sounds even better in the original version.
By the way, there are also nice television productions of the Sandman, such as 1983 with the young Christoph Waltz, who we later saw again – coincidence? – as the evil brother of 007. 😎