O autêntico Hoffmann (?)

(Joseph Calleja e Kate Lindsey em Les Contes de Hoffmann - Met Opera House, 2009)

Retorno à nova produção de Os Contos de Hoffmann, estreada no Met esta temporada. Desta feita, a polémica (!) centra-se na autenticidade da versão em cena. Polémica relevante e interessante, esta!

«In a news release for the Met’s new production, Mr. Levine stated that in the absence of an “authentic, fully realized original version,” companies must make their own choices. The score he has assembled for the Met, though loosely based on the old Choudens version, uses “a great deal of the information that has come to light over the years,” Mr. Levine wrote.

“Balderdash,” Mr. Kaye responded in an open e-mail message sent to numerous music critics. He wrote that he greatly regretted that Met audiences were not hearing some of the most recently discovered original music. Further, he reported that a new edition of the opera that he had completed with Jean-Christophe Keck, with the latest sources and discoveries, was soon to be published.

I am no expert on the conflicting versions of “Hoffmann,” which present the work variously with different arias, dialogue, orchestrations and even story twists.

Still, it is hard to dispute Mr. Levine’s observation that there will never be a definitive score for the work. Offenbach lovers who object to the Met’s choices regarding editions have to understand the world in which the composer, a savvy man of the theater, operated.

Were he to rise from the dead and learn that the Met was eager to put on “Hoffmann,” Offenbach would probably never say, “Ah, at last, a chance to hear my opera as I intended it!”

He would almost surely pose a list of questions to Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, and Mr. Levine: “Great. So, who is the tenor in the title role? How big will the orchestra be? Should we spruce up the orchestration? Do you need other changes? Are you going to perform it in English? I would assume so. It makes sense for a New York audience.”

It is hard to imagine that Offenbach would have conceived of a definitive version of one of his works, even an opera that meant as much to him as “Hoffmann.” This was not the way things occurred in the professional opera world of his time.»

Os Contos d'Offenbach

(cena d'Os Contos de Hoffmann - Met Opera House, estreia em Dezembro de 2009)

Barlett Sher assina a nova encenação d'Os Contos de Hoffmann (Offenbach), que o Met apresenta a 3 de Dezembro próximo. A propósito desta nova encenação, o artigo que cito do The New York Times refere aspectos biográficos interessantes do autor da ópera, que reproduzo:

«Offenbach, in real life, faced humiliation despite his seemingly perfect assimilation in France. Nicknamed the Little Jew in Cologne, where he was born in 1819, and at the Conservatory in Paris, where he moved in 1833, he was scorned for his gaunt appearance and shabby clothes and ridiculed for his heavy accent throughout his lifetime.

He married a Frenchwoman, converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism and changed his name from Jacob to Jacques. He became a naturalized Frenchman in 1860 and was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honor the next year. A Catholic priest administered the last rites at his deathbed in 1880.

Despite all these efforts and the huge popularity of his many operettas in France, Offenbach often had to prove his allegiance. James Harding, in his biography of the composer, points out that during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, French newspapers accused Offenbach of being a “Prussian at heart,” and German publications simultaneously mounted a campaign against him.

Hurt by the accusations, Offenbach contacted the French newspaper Le Figaro to defend his reputation. Though he had family and friends in Germany, he wrote, “I owe everything to France, and I would not think myself worthy of the name of Frenchman, which I have obtained through my work and my honorable standing, if I had made myself guilty of cowardice toward my first country.”

Offenbach was denied promotion to the next level in the Legion of Honor, and the personal attacks continued through the early 1870s. French detractors claimed that his opéras bouffes symbolized the frivolity that they believed had led to France’s defeat in the war. For a composer who longed to write weightier operas, this charge no doubt touched a sore nerve.

Offenbach, who was terminally ill with complications from gout while writing “Hoffmann,” is said by some to have identified particularly with the story of the singer Antonia, doomed to death if she sang. He knew that this opera, which he hoped would be the masterpiece that would cement his reputation as a serious composer, would also be his swan song.»