Tales of Hoffmann

Tales of Hoffmann is an opera by the German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach. The French playwright Jules Barbier wrote the libretto (text). For his opera, Offenbach adapted three short stories written by the German Romantic author E. T. A. Hoffmann. Offenbach also drew inspiration from the play The Tales of Hoffmann (1851) by Barbier and the French dramatist Michel Carré. The title of Offenbach’s opera in French is Les Contes d’Hoffmann.

Offenbach died before completing Tales of Hoffmann. The American-born French composer Ernest Guiraud finished it. The opera was first presented in Paris on Feb. 10, 1881. Several revised versions have been staged, some including Offenbach music discovered after his death. Some productions rearrange the acts and include music the composer wrote for other operas.

The central character in the opera is Hoffmann, a drunken poet. The opera includes a prologue (sometimes called act one) and an epilogue (sometimes called act five). The prologue is set in a tavern in Nuremberg, Germany. There, Hoffmann waits for Stella, an opera singer he loves, who is performing next door. In the next three acts, Hoffmann narrates the stories of three great loves in his life. The act following the prologue deals with Hoffmann’s love for a life-size singing doll named Olympia. In the next act, Hoffmann loves Antonia, the sickly daughter of a German musical instrument maker. In the next act, Hoffmann loves an Italian courtesan named Giulietta. A courtesan is a woman who receives payment for sex, usually with members of the upper class or nobility. All three of Hoffmann’s relationships end unhappily. In the epilogue, Stella finds Hoffmann drunk in the tavern. He rejects her, and she leaves with another man.

The best-known musical pieces in Tales of Hoffmann are Hoffmann’s first act aria about a legendary figure named Kleinzach and the famous barcarole, a Venetian gondolier’s boat song that begins Giulietta’s act.

See also Hoffmann, E. T. A.; Offenbach, Jacques.