Columns linked to Les Contes d'Hoffmann - Royal Opera House (2016)

Les contes d’Hoffmann at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Sam Smith

Jacques Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann is based on three short stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann, with the French libretto having been written by Jules Barbier. It premiered at the Théâtre National de l'Opéra-Comique in Paris on 10 February 1881 in a three-act version (with prologue and epilogue), but Offenbach never got to see the full version performed having died four months earlier. It had, however, been presented in an abridged form at the...