When Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann was first performed in Paris in 1881, the composer had been dead for three months, so it is perhaps hardly surprising that the work was seen as valedictory - "Offenbach's last testament", as one critic put it. Yet many also considered The Tales of Hoffmann strangely different from anything that he had previously produced, and indeed from anything anyone had heard before. Offenbach was primarily a composer of operettas, but The Tales of Hoffmann is a serious work that, despite moments of edgy humour, is overwhelmingly bleak, its subject matter sinister. The central character is based on the German writer ETA Hoffmann, who, during a drunken binge in a Nuremberg pub, tells three disquieting tales about the great loves in his life. Each is drawn from one of the real Hoffmann's short stories; each depicts passion thwarted by a demonic figure. The first object of his desire is the automaton Olympia. Hoffmann is conned into believing her to be a real woman by Coppelius, the deranged oculist who created Olympia's lifelike eyes, but who later destroys Hoffmann's fantasy by smashing her to bits. The second, Antonia, is a soprano, plagued by an unnamed illness that worsens when she sings. She becomes the victim of the mesmerist Dr Miracle, who forces her to sing herself to death.

Finally, there is Giulietta, a courtesan in thrall to the sorcerer Dapertutto. Giulietta offers her favours for the price of a man's soul, then rejects her victims when the grotesque transaction is completed. We are never told whether the tales are intended to be real, or whether they are the products of Hoffmann's booze-befuddled brain.


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