Les Contes d’Hoffmann – MET Opera Live in HD at Biografen Kino, Lund
Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann is the most enduring ‘serious’ opera from a composer better known for his operettas and Gina Lapinski’s 2016 revival of Bartlett Sher’s evocative Kafkaesque production provides the perfect vehicle in which Offenbach’s story – in turn witty, erotic, and macabre – and highly melodious music come together to form a deeply and satisfying whole.
Set in the 19th C, the great storyteller Hoffmann (Benjamin Bernheim) is losing himself to drink. His rival in love, Councillor Lindorf (Christian Van Horn), claims that Hoffmann knows nothing of the heart, and so goads Hoffmann into telling the tales of his three great loves – each destroyed by a villain who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lindorf…
First Hoffmann tells of his infatuation for the mechanical doll, ...