Word: offenbach
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...opera. This spring Dunster House offered a splendid performance of "Tales of Hoffmann." Some quite fine thespians and a refreshingly superb orchestra, coupled with the often ribald and vaudvillean tone of Jacques Offenbach's opera, provided a high caliber and rollicking fun performance...
Some fine thespians and a refreshingly superb orchestra, coupled with the often ribald and vaudvillean tone of Jacques Offenbach's opera, provided a high caliber and rollicking fun performance. Music Director Brent Ranalli and Stage Director Adriana Abdenur, are to be commended for a first-rate production, which would make past Dunster Opera legends, such as Jefferson Packer, Brian Saccente, and Kate DeLima oh-so-proud...
Recalling his German roots, Offenbach combines Oktoberfest-inspired scenes of tavern life and male-bonding-over-beer with the equally Teutonic theme of sensitive young men pining over that special Fraulein. (Think Goethe.) In this opera, the eponymous character Hoffmann (Jerry Shuman) dreams of not just one Fraulein, but a trinity of them who together form that elusive ideal--the perfect woman...
...should be mentioned that producer John Cearley and his directors daringly chose to tackle an obscure and risky sleeper of an opera in "Hoffmann"--foregoing the insurance of a familiar crowd-pleaser like "The Marriage of Figaro" or "La Boheme." Although Offenbach was referred to as the "Mozart of the Champs-Elysees" earlier in his career, "The Tales of Hoffmann" was his first real opera, departing from his jokier opera-bouffe compositions of the past...
...both wide and deep, moving with ease between the limpid grace of the classical period and the densest, most fearsome modern scores. His six-year tenure in Lyons has been marked both by important premieres (Debussy's unfinished Rodrigue et Chimene) and by alternative versions of such staples as Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann; in Manchester he champions a group of young, modernist British composers. "I guess I take an awful lot of risks," says Nagano. "But what I'm trying to do is make music an active, living art form that people today can relate...