Jacques Offenbach: The Tales of Hoffman (Les Contes d'Hoffmann): Opera: Libretto
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During a visit to America Offenbach conceived the idea of the large-scale opera that was to be his masterpiece. By 1878 he had completed all three acts of Les Contes d'Hoffmannn in piano score and orchestrated the Prologue butsadly he never lived to see it performed and it was completed and produced by his friend Ernest Guiraud. The opera opens in a Nuremburg tavern to which the scene returns at various points as Hoffmann with his companionNicklausse and his poetic muse tells of a series of amorous adventures with in turn a mechanical doll a Venetian courtesan and a young opera singer. The scheme works sufficiently well to avoid discontinuity though it couldeasily be regarded as a linked set of one-act operas with related themes -- deception betrayal and death. A thread of philosophical melancholy runs through Hoffmann's tales strongly suggesting that Offenbach was a dispiritedand disappointed man who no longer wished to be known only as a purveyor of musical soufflés.This edition of the libretto is in both the original French and in an English translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin.
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