User talk:Qexigator/Books/Hoffmann's "The Sandman" and other tales

Cover image

• 
  Les contes d'Hoffmann, Act 3, Antonia and Dr Miracle, Théâtre de L'Opéra-Comique (1881)
• 
  Illustration for première of Giulietta act, 1881

Qexigator (talk) 17:46, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

In connection with The Tales of Hoffmann

Barcarolle[1]

• French

Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour / Souris à nos ivresses / Nuit plus douce que le jour / Ô,belle nuit d’amour!

Le temps fuit et sans retour / Emporte nos tendresses / Loin de cet heureux séjour / Le temps fuit sans retour

Zéphyrs embrasés / Versez-nous vos caresses / Zéphyrs embrasés / Donnez-nous vos baisers! / Vos baisers! Vos baisers! Ah!

Belle nuit, ô, nuit d’amour / Souris à nos ivresses / Nuit plus douce que le jour, / Ô, belle nuit d’amour!

Ah! souris à nos ivresses! / Nuit d’amour, ô, nuit d’amour!

Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!

• English

Lovely night, oh, night of love / Smile upon our joys! / Night much sweeter than the day / Oh beautiful night of love!

Time flies by, and carries away / Our tender caresses for ever! / Time flies far from this happy oasis / And does not return

Burning zephyrs / Embrace us with your caresses! / Burning zephyrs / Give us your kisses! / Your kisses! Your kisses! Ah!

Lovely night, oh, night of love / Smile upon our joys! Night much sweeter than the day / Oh, beautiful night of love!

Ah! Smile upon our joys! / Night of love, oh, night of love!

Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!

Qexigator (talk) 00:48, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

External links

• March 2015 re-release of the 1951 film The Tales of Hoffmann as restored in DVD version, 136 mins: "Intoxicating, expressionistic...puts most of its modern rivals to shame." (The Guardian) The Tales of Hoffmann has been restored by The Film Foundation, supervised by Martin Scorsese, Thelma Schoonmaker and Ned Price. Sequences from Act Three and the Epilogue, missing from previously released versions, were found in material held at the British Film Institute and put back, as originally intended by directors Powell and Pressburger. With Hein Heckroth's design and art direction,[2]an international cast — Metropolitan opera star Robert Rounseville as Hoffmann, Antonia: Ann Ayars, Giulietta: Ludmilla Tchérina, Olympia: Moira Shearer — and with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham (excerpts from The Tales of Hoffmann were among Beecham's first recordings, which he began making, for HMV, in 1910), the closing credits end with "MADE IN ENGLAND" stamped firmly in gold on the blue cover of the score, like the arrow piercing the bullseye at the opening of an "Archers" film (perhaps also as an affirmation against Siegfried Kracauer's commentary on German filmaking in the inter-war period). Plus: Introduction from Martin Scorsese / Stills Gallery / Interview with Thelma Schoonmaker / Trailer.
• Barcarolle, as sung in clip from 1951 film version (restored) of The Tales of Hoffmann[3]
• The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1951) - Trailer[4]
• Other Hoffmann clips[5]
• In an article in The Guardian (9 January 2004) about the RoH stage production (9 January 2004) TIM ASHLEY (with no mention of the 1951 film version, no longer circulating at that time), remarked that, while stylistically Offenbach's opera shows French and German influences, like a tribute to the two countries that shaped his life -- Weberian chorales prefacing Hoffmann's narrative; Olympia's coloratura aria as out of French grand opera; Antonia singing herself to death to music reminiscent of Schubert; Giulietta's barcarole derived from Offenbach's previously unsuccessful opera with "The Rhine Nymphs", kin to the "Rhinemaidens" of Wagner's "The Ring" -- yet an aspect of the opera makes it unique: there is no definitive score, and can never be, leaving every conductor and producer approaching the work to choose what to include or omit. Much of the original material was lost in the Opera-Comique fire of 1887, but the great many manuscripts that are still extant include multiple versions of several scenes. Part of its abiding mystery, Ashley observed, and one of the sources of its fascination, is that to bring it to life its tales must be retold from scratch. from article by TIM ASHLEY, The Guardian newspaper (London, England) - January 9, 2004.
• About Hein Heckroth in connection with Hoffmann, Andrew Moor wrote in 2009 that a variety of settings were contained within a large cyclorama stretching halfway round the film studio. Each of the three acts featured a dominant tone. For act 1 (Paris), Heckroth declared, "The action takes place in yellow" while the set design is quite minimal: Olympia’s circular room has muslin walls and a swinging bed, that is all; for Venice in act 2, the colour is mauve-purple, with Ludmilla Tcherina looking threateningly gorgeous; and for act 3, blues and whites give an Attic mood. At the time when the film was released, Heckroth said that he liked to use colour as a musician uses a melody: "every mood and emotion has its shade." Heckroth's design for the film is full of visual tricks and trompe l’oeil, such as a sweeping staircase rolled out on the horizontal studio floor for Hoffmann and Antonia to dance down while a low-angled overhead camera plays with perspective to make the staircase’s descent seem real. Since the theme of the opera is Hoffmann’s faulty vision, duped by love, these visual deceptions aptly signify the power of cinematic illusion, poised between belief and disbelief, in which spectators participate. Moor concluded that if some critics see a taint of kitsch in the look of the film, "can’t we read that positively, as a visual statement about the tawdry nature of insubstantial dreams?" Monk Gibbon wrote, in 1951, of Heckroth’s style that it is not mordant, sardonic, or savage, but it is a great deal more than merely whimsical. Heckroth "sees man as a figure in a gothic tale . . . and sometimes as a puppet at the mercy of fate, playing his part consequentially in a drama which he does not understand." (Or we may look beyond that, to see something of the creative genius at work, in poets, in painters, in composers of music and films, and in musicians and artistic performers of all kinds.)
• The BFI’s website includes some images of Heckroth's designs for Hoffmann [6]
• "Hoffmann’s original short stories combine artistry and grotesquery, sparkling glitter and dark, ponderous depths; yet this production (ROH’s seventh revival of John Schlesinger’s 1980 production, 28 Nov 2008 (dedicated to the memory of Richard Hickox, who had conducted the 2004 revival) seldom scratches beneath the surface, frequently lapsing into gratuitous, pantomimic clichés.
• From A Merryman and his Maid or The Yeomen of the Guard, "I have a song to sing, O!",[7] Act I -Tommy Steele[8]
• YoG, "I have a song to sing, O!" Finale[9], "Act II Finale" -Tommy Steele. 'Yeomen of the Guard,' 1978[10]
• Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935 film)[11][12], To the stars - dance - A Midsummer Night's Dream[13]

In connection with Die Rheinnixen

Die Rheinnixen (1864, Hoftheater, Vienna) concludes with a combination of the barcarolle and the Vaterlandslied. Its text is:

• German

1. O könnt' ich's allen sagen, / Wie meine Pulse schlagen

Für dich, mein Vaterland! / Ich habe dir mein Leben, / Mein Alles hingegeben.

Ich nehm das Glas zur Hand / Und trink' es dir und ruf' es laut: / Du, Vaterland, bist meine Braut!

Du liebes Land, du schönes Land! / Du großes, deutsches Vaterland!

2. Wer sollte dich nicht ehren, / Nicht deinen Ruhm begehren,

O Heimat hold und traut! / Wo stolze Burgen thronen, / Wo treue Menschen wohnen,

Wo Sangeslust so laut: / Da muss am schönen grünen Rhein / Ein Leben voller Wonne sein!

O liebes Land, o schönes Land, / O schönes, großes deutsches Vaterland!

• English

1. O if I were only able to tell everyone / How my heart beats

For thee, my fatherland! / I have given thee my life, / I have given thee everything.

I take the glass / And toast thee and shout loudly: / Thou, my fatherland, art my bride!

Thou art a lovely and beautiful country! / Thou art my big, German fatherland!

2. Who should not honour thee, / Who should not crave thy glory,

O, my dear country, comely and intimate! / Where proud castles are enthroned, / Where faithful people live,

Where everyone loves to sing: / There, on the beautiful green Rhine, / Life must be full of pleasance!

Thou art a lovely and beautiful country, / Thou art my big, German fatherland!

Qexigator (talk) 00:48, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Overture

External link: Die Rheinnixen Overture,[14] source for the Giuletta (Venice) Barcarolle.

Qexigator (talk) 00:48, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

See also

• At Buxton Opera House

• Coppélia, the Turk, Petrushka

Qexigator (talk) 00:46, 9 January 2016 (UTC)