Les Contes d'Hoffman Trivia Quiz

Answer: A play

"Hoffman" was a play adapted from the stories of the famous German author.

Answer: Jules Barbier

Barbier's libretto was an adaption of the play he had written with Michel Carre.

Answer: The three "Hoffman" acts were to be performed separately (like the "Ring" operas)

Although each section of "Hoffman" is a self-contained drama in itself, they were certainly never intended to be performed as separate entities like the "Ring" operas. Offenbach wrote "Hoffman" with greater care than any other of his works, but had not completed the orchestration at the time of his death in 1880; the opera premiered in 1881.

Answer: Flashbacks

The opera begins with a prologue in which Hoffman offers to tell a group of students about his past loves; the following three acts all take place in the past. Although the stories that follow are fanciful and unreal (and certainly never actually happened in reality), we are to assume that Hoffman is not simply making them up or relating his dreams.

Answer: Mozart's "Don Giovanni"

Stella is appearing in the role of Donna Anna. When Hoffman enters with Nicklausse, the latter jokingly quotes a snatch of Leporello's "Notte e giorno faticar."

Answer: A dwarf

Kleinzach is a misshapen (but not hunchbacked) little dwarf who "lived at the court of Eisenach."

Answer: He is his student.

Spalanzani is training Hoffman to be a professor of physics.

Answer: Magic glasses

The glasses enable one to see reality as one would like it to be, not the way it is. When Hoffman puts them on, Olympia appears incredibly beautiful and lifelike. (Coppelius refers to the glasses as "mes yeux"-"my eyes", but the libretto specifies that he gives Hoffman "un lorgnon"-"an eyeglass".)

Answer: Her eyes

Coppelius sells eyes (real and artificial), as well as glasses. He has provided Olympia's eyes, which are made of enamel.

Answer: Stuttering

Cochenille seems to lose his stutter, however, in the act's final ensemble.

Answer: To avenge himself on Spalanzani, who has cheated him.

Although Coppelius' actions do have the effect of devastating Hoffman, this is (to him) collateral damage; his destruction of Olympia is done to repay Spalanzani for having paid him off with a worthless bank draft.

Answer: True

Offenbach had used the basic melody of the Barcarolle in a full length opera, "Die Rheinnixen" ("The Rhine-Maidens") commissioned by the Vienna Court Opera some 17 years earlier. "Die Rheinnixen", unfortunately, was a resounding failure.

Answer: True

Hoffman assures Nicklausse at the opening of this act ridicules the idea that a coutesan, such as Giulietta, could awaken his love. Either he is deceiving himself, or his feelings undergo a radical change afterward.

Answer: He kills someone.

Hoffman kills Schlemil, his rival for Giulietta's love, in a duel to which Schlemil challenges him.

Answer: The key to her room.

Hoffman eventually enters Giulietta's boudoir, only to find it empty. He then hears Giulietta calling to him mockingly as she glides off in a gondola in an embrace with her servent, Pitichinacchio.

Answer: True

The Venice act, as originally written, was the least "finished" of the three central acts (it was eventually built up with other music not originally written for the opera). It was felt that placing it in the center of the work, instead of at the climax, would make it's incomplete state less noticeable.

Answer: True

In the original score, Dapertutto sings the aria "Tourne, Tourne miroir." In the early twentieth century, this was reworked as Coppelius' Act II aria "J'ai des yeux". A different aria for Dapertutto was fashioned out of an aria from Offenbach's 1875 operetta "Les Voyage dans le Lune". The septet which now ends the Venice act was created using the melody of the "Barcarolle".

Answer: Bizarrely

The libretto reads "Une chambre bizarrement meublee" (" A bizarrely furnished room")

Answer: The orchestration is by Offenbach.

This aria is one part of the opera that Offenbach managed to fully orchestrate before he died. The orchestration includes the harpsichord, on which Antonia accompanies herself as she sings.

Answer: He is hard of hearing.

Frantz's nearly total deafness is a source of intense aggravation to Crespel and of great amusement to Hoffman, who upon greeting Frantz remarks "Ha Ha! Plus sourd encore que l'an passe?" ("Ha Ha! Even deafer than last year?"). Frantz, who has not heard him right replies, in all seriousness, "You're too kind, sir" ("Monsieur m'honore!")

Answer: He believes that Hoffman is endangering her life.

Antonia loves to sing.Unfortunately, she has a unique disease(which her mother died from) which causes her to become feverish and dangerously ill when she sings. Since her love for Hoffman causes her to sing from happiness, Crespel is determined to keep them apart.

Answer: Miracle was the doctor to Antonia's mother, who died under his "care".

Crespel, no doubt accurately, blames Doctor Miracle's "treatment" of his wife for the latter's death years earlier. He is terrified that Miracle will kill his daughter as well, a fear which proves well-founded.

Answer: "C'est une chanson d'amour"

This is the love song she had been singing earlier with Hoffman.

Answer: Bizet's "Carmen".

Guiraud's recitatives for Bizet's "Carmen" are still used today, although the original spoken dialogue has become much more popular since the 1970's when the Metropolitan Opera featured a highly successful new production starring Marilyn Horne and conducted by Leonard Bernstein which used the spoken dialogue.

Answer: True

Offenbach originally conceived the opera (for the Theatre de la Gaite-Lyrique) with a baritone Hoffman and the four heroines as a lyric soprano. When he submitted it for performance at the Opera-Comique, he was forced to make the leading male role a tenor and the heroines a coloratura soprano.

The four heroines (Olympia, Giulietta, Antonia, and Stella), as well as the four villains (Lindorf, Coppelius, Dapertutto, and Miracle), were intended to be performed by the same artist. Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland, Catherine Malfitano, and Carol Vaness, among others, have continued this tradition for the heroines; Gabriel Bacquier, Norman Triegle, James Morris, and Bryn Terfel, among others, have performed all four villains.