Where do I start with Opera?

If recitatives are a "step too far" for richypike I wonder if people think that Carmen might be a reasonable starter? There are plenty of recordings where the spoken recitative is retained (although I don't feel qualified to recommend a recording as I'm still searching -- not Bumbry/Vickers under Fruhbeck de Burgos is as far as I can go!).

And if the idea of opera as a dramatic form still seems preposterous I agree with the poster who suggested thinking about the singers -- you could view this as a great vehicle for a mezzo to act & sing, & consider whether she 'stakes her claim' in the role, in the way one might talk about an actor's Hamlet or something like that.

I don't know if anyone suggested this, but I would try the extensive Chandos Opera in English series. Surely, a foreign language can be a barrier to enjoyment of opera, so why not remove the barrier. These versions are well done. They may not be the best, but it is way to getting into opera. Some have even been conducted by famous conductors like Sir Charles Mackerras. Such is the case with most of the Janacek operas and even Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. 

Personally I would never recommend operas in translation. The Italian operas I have heard in English were so awful that I couldn´t keep a straight face, and I think Italian or French or German recitative translated into English would turn somebody, especially if they were new to opera, off it completely, and put them off repeating the experience. I don´t think a foreign language is a barrier to appreciating and enjoying opera at all, especially if you have a written translation or even a basic synopsis. The whole singing style of opera is so particular that even if it´s in a language you underdstand perfectly there´s probably a lot that you won´t catch and will need to refer to a libretto anyway. 

I suppose that I must admit I've never read Voltaire's translation because unlike opera, I read English in the original, but I would probably understand it better because French has not changed much since Voltaire and present-day readers of French can still read Voltaire's French without recourse to footnotes whereas present-day readers of English do. Let's face it. Most opera plots are silly to begin with. They only seem even sillier in English because we fully understand when we hear them in English, how silly they really are.

I think record companies frequently chose to record star singers in roles which were in their repertory on the whole. Was there any other native French singer around in the early seventies who could give full justice to the role of Hoffman?

However, there still existed at that time an institution in Paris called the Opéra Comique which was dedicated to singing French repertoire. This is where operas such as Pelleas et Mélisande were premiered. Decca could have chosen to record with the talent then available at the Opéra Comique had the recording in question not coincided with the globalization of opera and the star system. There were two opera companies at that time - the Opéra de Paris - which sung a more international repertoire - and the Opéra Comique. The Opéra Comique was disbanded some time in the 70s.  Even today, there are two distinct companies -one housed in the old Palais Garnier from the 19th century- and the other headquartered in the new Opera Bastille built in the 1980s. They have different repertoires even today.