DVD + Blu-Ray:
Hoffmanns Erzählungen

Felsensteins Hoffmanns Erzählungen brandnew remastered in 4k from the original 35mm film.

Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, opéra fantastique, is an unfinished work. When Felsenstein decided to produce Hoffmann, there was little source material to go on. However, not even he could have guessed that preparatory work on that opera would take over a year. He asked the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris to prepare copies of the original piano score of the first performance, the libretto from the first performance by Jules Barbier (Calmann-Lévy Éditeurs) and the five-act play of the same name, a drame fantastique, by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. Using this material as a starting point, Felsenstein created his own German five-act version based on the five-act play – the work he considered closest to Offenbach’s intentions.

In this version, the recitatives added by Ernest Guiraud have been completely eliminated to allow the text of play to be developed more fully. Referring back to material dating from the fi rst performance, Felsenstein found himself in complete agreement with Offenbach, who sought “a dramatically convincing sequence of spoken word, music and song, and not a through-composed opera.

Worldwide Release on 29 January 2021
Cat. No.: 109434 (DVD) | 109435 (Blu-ray)

Genre Opera film
Recording location DEFA Studios Babelsberg
Production year 1970 / 2020 brandnew remastered
Duration 131 mins
Video format DVD / NTSC | Blu-ray 1080i High Resolution
Audio format PCM Stereo
Composer Jacques Offenbach
Orchestra / Band Orchestra from the Komische Oper Berlin
Conductor Karl-Fritz Voigtmann
Stage Director Walter Felsenstein
Main Actor Hanns Nocker, Melitta Muszely, Rudolf Asmus, Werner Enders