Offenbach: Les Contes d'Hoffmann.(Video Recording Review)

OFFENBACH: Les Contes d'Hoffmann * Mentzer, Rancatore, Swenson, Uria-Monzon, Gubisch, Floquet; Shicoff, Terfel, Senechal, Jean, Vernhes, Maurette, Ribot, Smith; Opera Nat'l de Paris, Lopez-Cobos. TDK DVD DVUS-OPLCDH (Naxos, dist.), subtitled, 173 mins.

If E. T. A. Hoffmann were to see Robert Carsen's 2002 Paris production of Les Contesd'Hoffmann, he would experience a gratifying shock of recognition. Hoffmann conjured the abnormal from the normal, the supernatural from the real, and Carsen does this too, representing the theater itself as a site where fantasies blossom and turn into nightmares. While the entire production is played out on the actual Bastille stage itself, each episode is set in a space in that theater--the prologue and epilogue in the Bastille's bar, the Olympia episode backstage, the Antonia episode in the orchestra pit, and the Giulietta episode on the stage looking into the stalls. Most memorable is the Antonia episode, in which, breathtakingly, the mother returns as a ghostly Donna Anna, covered in tattered veils on a gigantic stage in eerie perspective. The following trio, sung with intense passion, is both a celebration of and a dire warning to all of us who have allowed opera to become the ruling passion of our lives. Carsen's production is a hymn of praise to theater, as well as a poem about the Romantic imagination.

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