Who composed the opera The Tales of Hoffmann?

Jacques Offenbach composed the opera The Tales of Hoffmann.

The French title is Les contes d’Hoffmann. Its libretto, by Jules Barbier, is based on three stories by the German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann: “The Sandman,” “Councillor Krespel,” and “The Story of the Lost Reflection.” The opera presents Hoffmann as both narrator and participant in a sequence of fantastic love stories.

Offenbach completed the score shortly before his death in 1880. The opera premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 10 February 1881, several months after the composer died. Ernest Guiraud prepared the performance materials and made important decisions about orchestration and ordering.

The work is often remembered for the “Barcarolle,” but that melody comes from the Giulietta act and had appeared earlier in Offenbach’s opera Die Rheinnixen. The famous number is not proof that the entire opera is set in Venice or that it was originally composed specifically for Hoffmann.