By the mid-1870s Jacques Offenbach’s career as “The King of Operetta” was over. In addition he was ill and getting worse. Yet he wanted to write a full-length “real opera” before he died. The result was The Tales of Hoffman, a 3 Act fantasy opera based on stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Offenbach lavished some of the most beautiful and imaginative melodies he ever wrote on Olympia, the “Mechanical Doll”, or Antonia, the consumptive soprano who sings herself to death, or the basso-devil who uses a magic diamond to steal the souls of his victims. Sadly, Hoffman died four months before the first performance of his Tales of Hoffman in 1881 and did not live to see its world-wide success which continues to this day. Sponsored by the Friends of the Mercer Island Library.
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