Tales of Who?
E. T. A. Hoffmann, Jules Barbier, and Michel Carré

Ernst Theodor Willhelm Hoffman (1776-1822) was an important German Romantic writer and thinker, as well as a minor composer.  While enrolled in law school by family tradition, he was allowed to continue studying painting, piano, and composition.  His personal life includes a painful teenage love affair and a broken engagement to his cousin before marrying Marianna Thekla Michaelina Rorer in 1802.  In 1812 he wrote in his diary of his hopeless love for Julia Mark, his 16-year-old student.

While navigating the pitfalls of forbidden love, Hoffmann read de la Motte-Fouqué’s Undine, the same story that would later inspire Dvořák’s Rusalka.  Hoffmann’s opera Undine opened successfully in 1816 and played 14 performances before the theatre burned down.

Hoffmann clearly admired Mozart.  Don Giovanni, he said, was the “opera of all operas.”  His admiration of Mozart was so great that around 1813 he changed his third name to Amadeus in tribute.  Hoffmann also paid homage to his idol in several works: In Les contes d’Hoffmann, Stella is performing in Don Giovanni.  In Hoffman’s story Don Juan, a traveler wanders from his hotel into a box at the opera house, where Don Giovanni is being performed.  Mysteriously, the box connects to his bedroom, where he finds Donna Anna.  They kiss.  The next morning, the traveler learns that the singer playing Anna died late that night.  See our Resources section for links to two translations of Hoffmann’s Don Juan.  See our BLO.org’s web page about our April 2009 production of Don Giovanni.

Hoffmann’s literary work includes two novels and about 50 short stories, often vivid, grotesque, and mysterious. He also wrote an important review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in which, along with analyzing the work, he discussed the stylistic roles of Haydn, Mozart, and especially Beethoven himself. Other composers took note of Hoffman’s works and were inspired by them to write operas and ballets in addition to Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, such as:

1851:   Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, librettists, worked with virtually all the major French composers during their professional lifetimes. In 1851, 28 years after Hoffmann’s death, Barbier and Carré wrote a “fantastic drama in five acts” called “Les contes d’Hoffmann”. Twenty-nine years later, Barbier adapted their play for Offenbach’s opera.

1868:  Richard Wagner used stories from Hoffmann’s collection Die Serapionsbrüder (“The Serapion Brotherhood”) in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

1870:  Léo Delibes based his ballet Coppélia on Der Sandmann (“The Sandman”), one of the three tales also adapted by Offenbach.  Lesser-known adaptations of “The Sandman” include La poupée de Nuremberg (“The Doll from Nuremberg,” operetta by Adolphe Adam, 1852) and La poupée (“The Doll,” operetta by Edmond Audran, 1892).

1892:  Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky based his ballet The Nutcracker on Hoffmann’s story Nußknacker und Mausekönig (“The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”) revised (sweetened) by Alexandre Dumas père as L’histoire d’un casse-noisette.

1926:  Paul Hindemith used stories from Die Serapionsbrüder in Cardillac.

WHO’S WHO AND WHO ELSE
Multiple roles in operas

Boston Lyric Opera’s cast of The Tales of Hoffmann includes four singers who play fourteen roles in the drama.  Soprano Georgia Jarman is Stella, Hoffmann’s current love, and she is also Olympia, Antonia, and Giulietta, the three women he has loved and lost.  Gaétan Laperrière foils Hoffmann in each act, as Counsellor Lindorf, Coppélius, Dr. Miracle, and Captain Dapertutto.   Mezzo-soprano Michèle Losier is Hoffmann’s friend Nicklausse and his Muse.  And Offenbach himself takes over the roles of four servants.

The Tales of Hoffmann is not unique in this way!  Here are some other operas where one singer plays multiple roles—sometimes by the creators’ intention, sometimes by performance tradition, and sometimes by the decision of an opera company.

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