Metropolitan Opera’s Gallery Met Short for The Tales of Hoffmann

Summary: The Metropolitan Opera’s Gallery Met Short for The Tales of Hoffmann is third in a series that links visual artists with current season operas.

Italian operatic tenor Vittorio Grigolo and American soprano Erin Morley reprise their 2014-2015 Met Opera season roles as Hoffmann and Olympia, respectively, for the 2017-2018 Met Opera season's production of Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann: The Metropolitan Opera (metopera), via Instagram June 16, 2017

The Metropolitan Opera’s Gallery Met Short for The Tales of Hoffmann is third in a series of short films produced by Gallery Met director Dodie Kazanjian to link original visual artworks with current season operas.

Dodie Kazanjian describes the series as expanding the connection of the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, located in the Metropolitan Opera House’s south lobby, with the opera company’s offerings. She tells Broadway World’s Opera News Desk: “The idea was to connect contemporary art and artists more directly with what happens onstage at the Metropolitan Opera.”

T.J. Wilcox’s short film is an original visual artwork treating Les Contes d’Hoffmann by German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach (June 20, 1819-Oct. 5, 1880). His Gallery Met Short was launched Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015, during the intermission of a live performance of Offenbach’s final opera for the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series.

The run time for Wilcox’s Gallery Met Short is 2 minutes 32 seconds. The film incorporates collages into 16-millimeter film.

Literary influences for Wilcox's take on The Tales of Hoffmann include stories by Prussian Romantic fantasy author Ernest Theodor Amadeus "E.T.A." Hoffmann (Jan. 24, 1776-June 25, 1822) and Das Umheimliche ("The Uncanny"), a 1919 essay by Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856-Sept. 23, 1939). In addition to Offenbach's opera, Wilcox also credits the 1951 film adaptation by British film director Michael Powell (Sept. 30, 1905-Feb. 19, 1990) and Hungarian British film director Emeric Pressburger (Dec. 5, 1902-Feb. 5, 1988).

Thomas John “T.J.” Wilcox was born in Seattle, King County, northwestern Washington, in 1965. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in 1989 from New York’s School of Visual Arts. Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, awarded him a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in 1995.

He credits growing up in Seattle, “in the faraway Northwest,” for his tendency toward Europhilia. He explains to Berlin-based art and literary critic Daniel Schreiber: “People speak about Seattle often as the edge of the earth. It was one of the last places settled by Europeans.”

Wilcox exhibited his first film, The Escape (of Marie Antoinette) in 1996 at Gavin Brown Gallery, then located in New York City’s west SoHo neighborhood. The Whitney Museum of American Art accepted the short, 12-minute film for display in the New York Whitney Biennial in 1998.

He regards Marie Antoinette’s seeming disconnect from reality as exemplifying artists’ attempts to make sense of the world by pursuing fantasies. He explains to American visual artist Anne Collier: “Things drag in their wake a lot of other histories beyond the marquee ones they most commonly represent.”

Les Contes d’Hoffmann returns as the second of 26 productions staged during the 2017-2018 Met Opera season. Nine performances are offered in September and October. Opening night is Tuesday, Sept. 26, at 7:30 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time). The month’s second performance is Saturday, Sept. 30, at 12 p.m.

Seven performances are scheduled for October. October’s performances are given on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 7, and Friday Oct. 13, at 8 p.m.; Wednesday, Oct. 18, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 21, at 12 p.m.; Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 7:30 p.m. The production closes with Saturday, Oct. 28’s performance at 12 p.m.

German conductor Johannes Debus conducts all nine performances. Italian operatic tenor Vittorio Grigolo and American soprano Erin Morley reprise their respective roles of unlucky poet E.T.A Hoffmann and Olympia the mechanical doll from January 2015’s Live in HD staging.

The season’s production revives staging directed by Bartlett Sher. The American theater director’s new production, which was used for the January 2015 Live in HD broadcast, debuted Dec. 3, 2009.

The takeaway for the Metropolitan Opera’s Gallery Met Short for The Tales of Hoffmann is that the third installment in a short film series links Seattle-born visual artist T.J. Wilcox’s original artwork with 19th century French composer Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Offenbach’s fantasy opera is revived as the second of the 2017-2018 Met Opera season’s 26 production.

New York City-based artist T.J. Wilcox preceded his Metropolitan Opera Met Gallery short of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann with In the Air, a cinema-in-the-round panorama of Manhattan viewed from his Union Square penthouse studio exhibited Sep 19, 2013-Feb 9, 2014, at New York's Whitney Museum: Whitney Museum of American Art @whitneymuseum, via Facebook Sep. 15, 2013

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Italian operatic tenor Vittorio Grigolo and American soprano Erin Morley reprise their 2014-2015 Met Opera season roles as Hoffmann and Olympia, respectively, for the 2017-2018 Met Opera season's production of Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann: The Metropolitan Opera (metopera), via Instagram June 16, 2017, @ https://www.instagram.com/p/BVapVulHzU-/

New York City-based artist T.J. Wilcox preceded his Metropolitan Opera Met Gallery short of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann with In the Air, a cinema-in-the-round panorama of Manhattan viewed from his Union Square penthouse studio exhibited Sep 19, 2013-Feb 9, 2014, at New York's Whitney Museum: Whitney Museum of American Art @whitneymuseum, via Facebook Sep. 15, 2013, @ https://www.facebook.com/whitneymuseum/photos/a.75036141432/10151584316436433/

For further information:

Collier, Anne. “T.J. Wilcox.” Bomb Magazine > Artists in Conversation. Spring 2010.
Available @ http://bombmagazine.org/article/3453/t-j-wilcox

Colombo, Erica. “T.J. Wilcox. Galleria Raffaella Cortese > Press Release. 2014.
Available @ http://www.galleriaraffaellacortese.com/index.cfm?box=news&azione=view_plus&idnews=315&id=116

“Gallery Met Shorts.” The Metropolitan Opera > Visit > Exhibitions.
Available @ http://www.metopera.org/Visit/Exhibitions/Gallery-Met-Shorts/

Metropolitan Opera. “Gallery Met Shorts: The Tales of Hoffmann.” YouTube. Jan. 31, 2015.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=octAIvECKjY

Metropolitan Opera. “Les Contes d’Hoffmann Trailer.” YouTube. Jan. 16, 2016.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC2XEKs45hU

Opera News Desk. “The Met’s Gallery Met Shorts Series to Launch 10/11 With Macbeth.” Broadway World > Broadway World Opera. Oct. 3, 2014.
Available @ http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwopera/article/The-Mets-Gallery-Met-Shorts-Series-to-Launch-1011-with-MACBETH-20141003

Peyton, Elizabeth. “T.J. Wilcox.” Interview Magazine > Art. Sept. 18, 2013.
Available @ http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/tj-wilcox

Schreiber, Daniel. “The Collector of Sad and Beautiful Stories: An Encounter with T.J. Wilcox in New York.” Deutsche Bank ArtMag, issue 50. Deutsche Bank ArtMag > Archive > 2008.
Available @ http://db-artmag.com/archiv/2008/e/5/2/630.html

"T.J. Wilcox.” Art Production Fund > Artists.
Available @ http://www.artproductionfund.org/artists/tj-wilcox

Whitney Museum of American Art @whitneymuseum. "VIDEO: Artist T. J. Wilcox discusses the influence of New York City on his new video installation, In the Air, which opens September 19. http://bit.ly/166ofw7." Facebook. Sept. 15, 2013.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/whitneymuseum/photos/a.75036141432/10151584316436433/