HOFFMANN ERNST THEOD - MUSICAL TALES

Description

2022 : Hoffmann Bicentenary // LIMITED EDITION PACKAGE

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822) was a leading - and undisputed - figure in German Romantic literature, and remained famous for his fantasy tales. The French public began to know him shortly after his death, notably thanks to translations by Loève-Veimars, Henry Egmont, and Émile de La Bédollière. The craze for this literary genre thus spread to France, after having dominated the Prussian readership. In 1830, the publication of the French edition of Les Contes fantastiques by Eugène Renduel inspired the librettists Jules Barbier (1825-1901) and Michel Carré (1821-1872), who used three short stories to create a "fantastic drama in five acts", which was performed in 1851 at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris under the title Les Contes d'Hoffmann: Les aventures de la nuit de la Saint-Sylvestre (1814), L'homme au sable (1817) and Le violon de Crémone (1819). This theatrical work made a lasting impression on the Parisian public, notably Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) who, from then on, thought of turning it into an opera, but also other French composers, such as Adolphe Adam (1803-1856) and Léo Delibes (1836-1891). It was also a tale by Hoffmann, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816), which inspired the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) for his famous ballet of 1892.

On the CD: excerpts from The Nuremberg Doll (Adam), Coppélia (Delibes), The Tales of Hoffmann (Offenbach) and The Nutcracker (Tchaikovsky).