Barcarolle (Les contes d'Hoffmann)

Offenbach spent his last years on a work meant to establish him outside operetta: a play by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré that makes E. T. A. Hoffmann the hero of three of his own tales. He died on 5 October 1880 with the orchestration unfinished, and Ernest Guiraud completed it for the Opéra-Comique premiere on 10 February 1881. The Vienna production that year ended when the Ringtheater burned down. Cuts made before the first night were lost for decades and further manuscripts have surfaced since, so no definitive version exists; each staging chooses its own order of acts and its own ending.