SUZANNE BERTIN (Soprano)
THE GERSHOM PARKINGTON QUINTET
Selection, ' Tales of Hoffmann ' ...... Offenbach
OFFENBACH'S success as a composer of comic operas of that slight order for which we have no exact equivalent in this country was almost unique. His industry was also astonish. ing, and the number of successful works which he produced in his busy life is well nigh incredible. It was his ambition, however, to write at least one work of a rather more serious order,. and,he was at work on this Tales of Hoffmann when he died. It was completed by Guiraud, and produced in Paris in 1881, the year after its composer's death, and was given over a hundred times in that same year. It has over since been in the repertory in Paris, and is regularly played in most countries of Europe, even in our own.
Offenbach's music enjoyed an extraordinary vogue in this country in the latter part of last century, although, to any who know it at the fountain head, it inevitably loses something of its delicate flavour in crossing the Channel. None the less, Tales of Hoffmann bids fair to keep its hold on our affections, and, either as a whole opera or in part, is well known to the ordinary listener.
There is a Prologue in a wine cellar in which his friends twit Hoffmann, the poet, about his many love affairs, and each of the three acts is his recounting of one of them, always with an evil spirit at his elbow, somewhat after the manner of Mephistopheles in Faust.