The Tales of Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach

Hoffmann's Tales is the last, unfinished work of Jacques Offenbach, master of the humorous muse, author of operettas and musical comedies, including The Beautiful Helen, Orpheus in Hell, and Life in Paris.

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), a Parisian composer originally from Cologne, is considered an outstanding representative of nineteenth-century French operetta. In his humorous and melodic works, he ridiculed the socio-political life of France under Napoleon III. He had international success (his Kankan conquered the whole world), but also struggled with bankruptcies. At the end of his life, he wanted to create a unique work: the fantastic opera The Tales of Hoffmann, based on the fashionable stories of Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann. The Tales are Offenbach's only outstanding opera, far surpassing his operettas in artistic values. The composer wanted to create a work that would secure him a position among the great opera creators.

The authors of the libretto used an extremely interesting solution — they not only based the idea on numerous stories by Hoffmann, but also made their author a hero of the opera, uniting individual “stories” into a whole. Using fragments from Hoffmann's works, the authors created, in fact, three new stories, connected by the character of the title character. This is how the best of his musical “stories” with beautiful arias and immortal barcarolle were created. Unfortunately, the composer did not finish the work and did not see the premiere, which took place on February 10, 1881 at the Opéra Comique in Paris.