TheatreHD Opera Club in GUM Cinema. Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Special screening with Tatyana Belova

The hero of Jacques Offenbach's final work (and he was far more than just an operetta composer!) for the Paris Opéra-Comique is the romantic poet E.T.A. Hoffmann — a man in the grip of a deep creative crisis, who conjures up "Tales" in which his beloved appears to him in three different guises. In Mariame Clément's production, Hoffmann — played with dazzling charm by Benjamin Bernheim — is reimagined as a Wes Anderson-style character: a film director trapped in the 1960s, haunted by his own nightmares. He lives next to a Hollywood studio, pushes a shopping cart around, and eats in a canteen populated by extras in costume — Roman guards, cowboys, Baroque aristocrats, and aliens. 

The role of Stella — and the three fairy-tale heroines who embody her — is sung by soprano Kathryn Lewek: powerful, charismatic, with coloratura as pure as a bell. Christian Van Horn takes on the roles of Lindorf and his various incarnations throughout the tales. At the podium, conductor Marc Minkowski brings to life a score where sharp wit rubs shoulders with tender emotion and tragic passion.