STANDPOINT

DIRECTORS’ CORNER

Peter Boon Koh

ILA 2023 Debut Les Contes d’Hoffmann

In his lifetime, Jacques Offenbach was known for his comedic light operettas with catchy tunes. But as with all creative geniuses, he wanted more.

He wanted to be remembered as a composer of something serious, something lasting.

Enter The Tales of Hoffman. Or Les Contes D’ Hoffmann, which he hoped would elevate his reputation and standing as a master of serious opera after cutting his teeth on earlier frothy works.

The story draws on the life of E.T.A. Hoffman, inspired by a play about the German poet written by Jules Barbier and Michael Carre.

The real Hoffmann was born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann in 1776 (he introduced the “A” later as an homage to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). Like the character in the opera, he was given to drink, but unlike the character, he was an accomplished writer of fantasy stories, a music critic, a composer and a lawyer to boot.

Placing the troubled titular character center-stage in three stories starring a lifelike doll, a seductive courtesan, and a singer with a life-threatening affliction, we witness the vagaries of his heart. In spite of his deluded rose-tinted predispositions, we get drawn into his universe of tragic love. The result is lush, expressive 19th century French opera melding musical artistry with emotional pathos.

That universe is charming, yet dark; real, but surreal. Are there really different villains and love interests? Or are they facets of the same cores: Heaven and Hell, caressing the fool-for-love Hoffman one moment and tormenting him the next? What does it say about us, as a modern day audience, that we have a soft spot for these themes, if not in opera houses around the world, then as the backbone of multi-season reality television shows?

In this pared-down staging, you will experience these elements through our young singers, under the masterful baton of Maestro James Meena.

Thankfully, our production was spared from the real life drama of Les Contes D’ Hoffmann. For example, the original production suffered a setback in its early days when the theater that the opera was to make its debut in had its budget slashed. Then, after Offenbach continued working on his still-unfinished score at a second theater, the production again got halted when the composer died. It eventually premiered four months later.

Consequently, the debate over the composer’s vision and intentions has seen the sequence of the three stories in the plot line vary in many stagings since. In ours, we have opted to showcase the stories of Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta in that order.

Despite its early difficulties, The Tales of Hoffmann has endured as one of the most popular works in opera repertory after it first premiered in 1881.

Offenbach may not have lived to see the premiere of his Tales of Hoffman but through this staging, I hope his magnum opus will live on in you, dear opera lover.