The most anticipated event of the theatrical season 2010-11 in Moscow is the premiere of Jacques Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann at the Moscow Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre. The renowned “Sverdlovsk team” — director Alexander Titel, conductor Yevgeny Brazhnik and designer Valery Leventhal, produce a completely new version of the “good old” show that was an important milestone in the development of the repertoire of Moscow operatic life in 1987.

The only opera by Offenbach, who was often referred as “The King of Operetta”, received its premiere in early 1881 in Paris at Le Théâtre national de l’Opéra-Comique. The composer did not live up to the premiere, as he passed away in October 1880. 130 years later, the October of 2010, was marked with a tragic news about the death of one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century — Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE, who was one of the few dared to perform all three of the most difficult vocal parts — Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta, and played the role of Stella — the image of all three heroines of the opera.

Hibla made a successful debut in Les Contes d’Hoffmann on stage of the Metropolitan Opera last autumn, performing the parts of Antonia and Stella. Composer’s bequest was that all major female parts must be performed by one singer, and Hibla Gerzmava is now completely prepared to take part in this amazing experiment of remarkable creativeness in order to discover and demonstrate various facets of her unique talent that combines three entities — the instrumentalist, the singer and the actress.