Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Buy Tickets. Share on Facebook; Share on Twitter; Share Bartlett Sher’s imaginative production, with sets by Michael Yeargan and costumes by Catherine Zuber, explores all the riches of Offenbach’s fantastical tale. Joseph Calleja is the poet Hoffmann who is enthralled by a variety of women—neither of which turns out to be the perfect creature he envisions. Kathleen.
Jacques Offenbach, born almost 200 years ago, left behind a conundrum for posterity, albeit unintentionally. Above all, his last work The Tales of Hoffmann has preoccupied musicologists and performers right up to the present day. As Offenbach died unexpectedly prior to the first performance of this opera, there has never been a definitive version of this work for the stage.
Natalie Dessay conquered the world as the mechanical doll Olympia, while Sumi Jo seduces as Giulietta and Leontina Vaduva wrings the heart as Antonia. Conducting Michael Kaye’s comprehensive edition of the episodic score (left incomplete at Offenbach’s death), Kent Nagano brilliantly fuses the diverse elements of Les Contes d’Hoffmann.
Natalie Dessay is a French opera soprano. She was born on April 19, 1965 (55 years old) as Nathalie Dessaix. Natalie Dessay had a highly acclaimed career as a coloratura soprano before leaving the opera stage on 15 October 2013. She dropped the silent h in her first name in honor of Natalie Wood when she was in grade school and subsequently.
In 1914, World War I, the bloodiest war ever at that time in human history, was well under way. However on Christmas Eve, numerous sections of the Western Front called an informal, and unauthorized, truce where the various front-line soldiers of the conflict peacefully met each other in No Man's Land to share a precious pause in the carnage with a fleeting brotherhood.
San Francisco Opera presents Jacques Offenbach’s dramatic masterpiece LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN (The Tales of Hoffmann) at the War Memorial Opera House, opening on June 5 with eight subsequent performances through July 6. American tenor Matthew Polenzani sings the title role opposite Natalie Dessay as Antonia, Christian Van Horn as the four.
READ THIS EXCELLENT EXCLUSIVE IN-DEPTH ARTICLE ABOUT MS. DESSAY'S LIFE AND CAREER, AUTHORED BY OUR STAFF MEMBER RGZ: Artist In-Depth: Natalie Dessay Natalie Dessay is certainly one of the most important singers of the last several decades. While her voice does not appeal to all and her views about what opera is and should be are controversial.
Her “destiny” to replace other singers began auspiciously in 2012 when she seized all four roles in Les Contes d’Hoffmann from Natalie Dessay at a gala Paris concert conducted by Marc Minkowski. Next Aleksandra Kurzak’s pregnancy occasioned her Met debut as Gilda in 2013 ahead of a previously scheduled first appearance as Musetta.Also at the Met she sang her first staged Mimi and an.