The Tales of Hoffman[U]

Wednesday 25 March, 2pm
Thursday 26 March 2015, 4pm
£5.50

Director :Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cast:Robert Rounseville, Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Frederick Ashton
UK | 1951 | 2hrs 24m

Prepare to be astonished by the audacity and inventiveness of Powell & Pressburger’s dazzling take on Jacques Offenbach’s 1881 opera. Drawing on some of the greatest film, music and dance talents of the period, they transform it into a musical phantasmagoria. Metropolitan opera star Robert Rounseville plays Hoffman, a melancholy poet who is spectacularly unlucky in affairs of the heart. The film’s best moments are its ballet sequences, choreographed by Jane Ashton, and Offenbach’s score is given a splendid rendition by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of the legendary Sir Thomas Beecham. This revelatory 4K restoration from the original 3-strip Technicolor negative contains previously unseen footage.

For more information visit http://www.dartington.org/spektrix/event?Id=105199