Les Contes d’Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach inaugurates the 2023-2024 Opera and Ballet Season of the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice in Venice, with a live premiere starting at 6 p.m. on Radio Rai 3. A title that has been missing from the Fenice playbill since 1994, it is staged at the Teatro La Fenice in a new production directed by Damiano Michieletto and conducted by Frédéric Chaslin, who conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro La Fenice. Main actors Ivan Ayon Rivas, Alex Esposito, Carmela Remigio, Veronique Gens, Rocío Pérez. The production – an international co-production with Sidney Opera House in the year of its 50th anniversary celebrations, Royal Opera House of London and Opéra National de Lyon – will be staged on 24, 26, 28, 30 November and 2 December 2023. The Season Opening is supported by the Freundeskreis des Teatro La Fenice. An opéra-fantastique in a prologue, three acts and an epilogue by Jules Barbier, The Tales of Hoffmann takes its literary origin from the play of the same name by Jules Barbier, itself based on a play written in 1851 with Michel Carré and inspired by the three fantastic-demonic tales by E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Sandman, The Story of the Lost Reflection and The Violin of Cremona). It was composed by Offenbach in 1880 and performed in February the following year at the Opèra- Comique in Paris.
