The Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach, Fra (2021/2022), Instrueret af Alexander Titel, Dirigent Arif Dadashev, Victor Aviat, Evgeny Brazhnik, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theater, Moscow, Russia

The opera The Tales of Hoffmann occupies a special place in the vast legacy of Jacques Offenbach. This is the only tragic work of the great master of operetta and comic opera. The plot of the opera is based on several short stories by the German romantic writer Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann: The Sandman, Adventure on New Year's Eve and Counselor Crespel. They are united by a cross-cutting plot, the heroes of which are Hoffmann himself, his beloved Stella and the demonic villain - adviser Lindorf. In the stories that the title character tells to random interlocutors, reality is bizarrely mixed with fiction. At the Musical Theatre. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko the music of "Tales of Hoffmann" sounded repeatedly. In 1946, conductor Yevgeny Akulov and director Pavel Markov staged a performance called "The Poet's Love". In 1959, the Komische Oper, a Berlin theater that was friendly to us, brought their version of The Tales of Hoffmann on tour, and in 1987 the Komische Oper ballet troupe showed a choreographic transcription of Offenbach's opera In the same 1987, the Sverdlovsk Opera and Ballet Theater (now the Ural Opera Ballet) performed on the stage of the Musical Theater. The Tales of Hoffmann staged by conductor Yevgeny Brazhnik, director Alexander Titel and artist Valery Leventhal were an enchanting success. A quarter of a century later, three remarkable masters again joined forces and presented a completely different view of the same work. Their new "Tales of Hoffmann" - spectacular, dynamic and poetic - also met with a warm welcome from the public and the professional community: the performance won the Golden Mask award as the best opera production of the season.