Around 1981 film director John Schlesinger staged Offenbach's wonderful Les Contes d'Hoffmann for Placido Domingo and the Royal Opera. The DVD is probably my favorite staging of the opera. I do love the Michael Powell film, but it cuts about a quarter of the score. Both the Schlessinger staging and the film catchg more of the gothic and tragic qualities than any other staging I've seen live or on video.
So, around 2016, the Royal Opera restaged the production, and last night I watched the new DVD. The cast is good, although Thomas Hampson, a singer I really like, doesn't really have the low notes for the evil genius and his disguises. I thought the singer playing Olympia, the mechanical doll, was sloppy in her coloratura but she acted the role well. The Antonia, Sonya Yoncheva, was superb. Vittorio Grigolo and Kate Lindsey, as Hoffmann and Nicklausse, were fantastic.
The 1981 staging used the traditional 1904 score published by Choudens with Raoul Gunsbourg's "finalization" of the Venice act. Sin ce the second half, more of Offenbach's opriginal scores from 1880 have turned up, and this new Royal Opera included some music I had nevere heard before, like the Violin aria for Nicklausse in the Antonia act.
