Les contes d'Hoffmann

Offenbach was still working on Les contes d'Hoffmann when he died on 5 October 1880, four months before the first performance at the Opéra-Comique on 10 February 1881; Ernest Guiraud completed and orchestrated what was left. Jules Barbier's libretto sets E. T. A. Hoffmann himself among his own characters, so that the poet's three loves become three tales. Because Offenbach left no final version, the order of the acts, the assignment of roles and even which numbers belong in the score have been argued over ever since, and no performing edition has become definitive.