Star soprano Jessica Pratt is about to play all four heroines in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann for Opera Australia. She talks to Clive Paget about bel canto, mad scenes and the formidable yet thrilling challenge ahead.

Jessica Prat stands outdoors on a balcony.
Jessica Pratt. Photo © Alessandro Moggi

Asked to define the art of the prima donna, you could do worse than contemplate Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. The culmination of the composer’s life’s work, and his most successful stab at creating a proper grand opera, it contains roles for four sopranos that, between them, encapsulate every vocal and dramatic weapon that a 19th-century singer was expected to have in her armoury. The combination of Olympia, the clockwork doll with mechanical coloratura...