The Tales of Hoffmann or Les contes d'Hoffmann if you want to get technical.

Offenbach began composing Les contes d'Hoffmann in 1879 but never completed it.  It's first performance was on February 10th 1881, over 4 months after his death on October 5 1880.  This opera is considered an opera fantastique and is based on three short stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann (I will write a separate post on him) and Offenbach's libretto was written by Jules Barbier. 


This opera is unique to the rest of Jacques because he actually never finished composing the orchestration. He did complete the piano score for the entire work and the orchestrations to the prologue and first act. Because of this there are many different editions, some show little resemblance to the authentic work where as others are quite realistic.  The version the premiered was an edition by Ernest Guiraud who completed the rest of the scoring while adding some recitatives.

Some changes that have been made to the opera over the years are the following:


-Changes in the sequence of acts.
-Extra music added from different operas.
-The names of the acts.
-Changes in the story.
-Recitative turned into spoken dialogue.
-The number of singers who perform the opera.


Over one hundred years later we are still trying to find the closest edition that Offenbach would have completed.  In 1992 new authentic music was found and published by Michael Kaye. And finally in 2011 two large publishing houses one German and one French released a grand "Edition Offenbach" and is said to be the closest this we will ever get to the original.