Real Tales of Hoffmann - Annotated by Vincent Giroud & Michael Kaye (Paperback)

About the Book

Giroud and Kaye tell the full story of The Tales of Hoffman for the first time. After discussing the work's influences and history, the book details sources for the opera, including the complete Barbier and Carré play. The annotated libretto is published in full, with the vari...

Book Synopsis

Giroud and Kayetell the full story of The Tales of Hoffman for the first time. After discussing the work's influences and history, the book details sources for the opera, including the complete Barbier and Carré play. The annotated libretto is published in full, with the variants, and essays explain the enduring evolution of the opera.

Review Quotes

The authors of The 'Real Tales of Hoffmann' have performed an invaluable service to all opera theaters, audiences, and scholars by presenting in one volume so much information about Offenbach's masterpiece and important source material that is not readily available. Stage directors, designers, dramaturgs, conductors, and singers will also find the advice on choosing a version particularly illuminating.

The authors of The Real 'Tales of Hoffmann' have performed an invaluable service to all opera theaters, audiences, and scholars by presenting in one volume so much information about Offenbach's masterpiece and important source material that is not readily available. Stage directors, designers, dramaturgs, conductors, and singers will also find the advice on choosing a version particularly illuminating.

The book could be helpful to performers and conductors in choosing how to interpret the roles, cast the show, and choose an edition . . . Historians and others interested in the creation and development of the work, however, will find the listing of performances fascinating, especially since Kaye explains the edition choice, the casting, and other relevant details pertaining to the different stage production . . . Overall, this book will appeal to a wide audience that is interested in learning more about Hoffmann, the librettists, Offenbach, and the various iterations of his most popular opera.

The Real 'Tales of Hoffmann' is a commendable collaboration of the opera historian par excellence, Vincent Giroud and Michael Kaye, who is something of a genius--a tireless researcher, an original thinker, a musicological historian unencumbered with prefabricated aesthetic prejudices--who has given the world rare, often revisionary, always profoundly valuable insights into the mind of Jacques Offenbach and the circuitous creation (also re-creation over time) of Les contes d'Hoffmann. They have earned unbridled admiration and gratitude from all who seek broadened horizons regarding the universal presentation of conventional, also unconventional, music and theater.

This scrupulously historical reconstitution of the origins and destiny of Les contes d'Hoffmann, perhaps the most misunderstood work in the operatic repertory, and certainly one of my favorite operas, will be a revelation to musicians and to everyone who has ever fallen under the spell of Offenbach's immortal masterpiece.

About the Author

Vincent Giroud is professor at the University of Franche-Comté, Besançon (France), former curator of modern books and manuscripts, Beinecke Library, Yale University, author of French Opera: A Short History, Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music, and contributor to the Oxford Handbook of Opera and the Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music.

Michael Kaye, eminent American musicologist, author of The Unknown Puccini, translator of Giacomo Puccini Catalogue of the Works, editor of works by numerous composers performed and recorded by major artists and orchestras, lecturer, educator, radio commentator, producer and opera administrator, annotator for major recordings, former member of the musical and artistic staffs of opera companies in the United States and Europe, including the Metropolitan Opera.