The Met's new production of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, conducted by Music Director James Levine and directed by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher, premieres on December 3. Joseph Calleja sings the title role for the first time in his career, and Anna Netrebko adds new roles to her Met repertoire as both Antonia and Stella. Also making role debuts are Kathleen Kim as Olympia, Ekaterina Gubanova as Giulietta, and Kate Lindsey as Nicklausse/The Muse. Alan Held, who has tackled all four villain roles before, reprises this feat in the new production. Set designer Michael Yeargan and costume designer Catherine Zuber, both Tony Award-winners who worked with Sher on his acclaimed Met production of IL Barbiere di Siviglia, are also on the production team for the new Les Contes d'Hoffmann. James F. Ingalls joins them as the lighting designer, and the choreography is by Dou Dou Huang, who made his Met debut as the choreographer and lead dancer for Tan Dun's The First Emperor. John Keenan conducts on December 23, 26, and 30. Performances run through January 2, and the December 19 matinee will be the season's fourth transmission in The Met: Live in HD series seen in movie theaters around the world.
Sher, whose Met debut production of IL Barbiere di Siviglia has been an audience favorite since it opened in 2006, creates the new staging for Offenbach's final masterpiece, which he calls "a magical journey in which the title character works out different manifestations of his psyche...The opera is often approached in terms of the crazy imagination of Hoffmann," Sher says, referring to the early German romantic polymath whose stories are used for the opera's episodic plot. "I'm more interested in why Offenbach, who had been a very popular operetta composer, was seeking to write a serious work to gain acceptance. Why, so late in his career, did he feel this need to be accepted? That led me to consider Offenbach's sense of being Jewish and an outsider. Whatever group he was in, he always appears as an outsider who never feels like he belongs, never feels like he's connected." The ambiguities and split identities of the characters figure in Sher's vision of the piece. "For any artist, ambition and paranoia are both always present. The door keeps opening and there are many Hoffmanns, identities that keep overlapping. I think the real artistic dilemma for Offenbach is the tension between the cover and the internal state, and that's what I hope to try to show."
Offenbach died before a definitive score for Les Contes d'Hoffmann was established, though he left many sketches of possible additions and replacements which have led to different performing versions over the years. The Met production will use the same version that was used in the most recent revival, in 1999-2000, with the Olympia act first, followed by the Antonia act, then Giulietta placed third. Maestro Levine says of the musical version, "The music is so inspired, and I think we have made effective choices in the absence of an authentic, fully realized original version, using a great deal of the information that has come to light over the years."
About the Performers
Kathleen Kim makes her role debut as Olympia, the mechanical doll, in the new production of Les Contes d'Hoffmann. She appeared in two operas at the Met last season, as Papagena in Die Zauberflöte and the First Sprite in Rusalka. She made her company debut in 2007 as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro and later that season performed Oscar in Un Ballo in Maschera. The American soprano is a recent graduate of the Ryan Opera Center, the young artist's program at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Her repertoire also includes Armida in Handel's Rinaldo (Central City Opera), Blonde in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Minnesota Opera), Marie in La Fille du Régiment (Bilbao Opera), and Madame Mao Tse-tung in Nixon in China (Chicago Opera Theatre).
When Anna Netrebko sang Antonia at the Mariinsky Theater, the critic in the St. Petersburg Times wrote that "her captivating performance was the genuine highlight of the production. Her tormented Antonia, suffering over the paths she had to choose, was pierced with despair." The star Russian soprano returns for the first time this season, adding the roles of Antonia and Stella in Les Contes d'Hoffmann to her repertoire with the company. In February and March she will sing Mimì in La Bohème, a role she has sung in a widely acclaimed film, but which she has only sung on one previous occasion at the Met. Last season she sang the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor, which was transmitted live in HD. Since her 2002 Met debut as Natasha Rostova in War and Peace, she has sung Norina in a new production of Don Pasquale (2006), Musetta in La Bohème, Gilda in Rigoletto, and Zerlina in Don Giovanni. She also sang Donna Anna in Don Giovanni during the company's 2006 tour to Japan. Her performances as Elvira in I Puritani in the 2006-07 season and as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette in 2007-08 were transmitted worldwide as part of The Met: Live in HD series. I Puritani is also available on DVD on the Deutsche Grammophon label. In 2007, she and Rolando Villazón gave a special concert to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Met at Lincoln Center, Anna & Rolando Celebrate the Met, with excerpts from La Bohème, Manon, and L'Elisir d'Amore.
