The Best Tales Of Hoffmann

Ten of Hoffmann's greatest tales, enormously popular in Europe but rarely seen in the United States: "The Golden Flower Pot," "Automata," "Nutcracker and the King of Mice," "The Sand Man," and 6 others.

This selection of Hoffmann's finest short stories vividly demonstrates his intense imagination and preoccupation with the supernatural, placing him at the forefront of both surrealism and the modern horror genre. Suspense dominates tales such as Mademoiselle de Scudery, in which an apprentice goldsmith and a female novelist find themselves caught up in a series of jewel thefts and murders. In the sinister Sandman, a young man's sanity is tormented by fears about a mysterious chemist, while in The Choosing of a Bride a greedy father preys on the weaknesses of his daughter's suitors. Master of the bizarre, Hoffman creates a sinister and unsettling world combining love and madness, black humour and bewildering illusion.

Mary Dibbern, Music Director of Education and Family Programs at The Dallas Opera, and adjunct faculty member at the University of North Texas has created a Performance Guide for Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann. This contribution to the Vox Musicae series presents a word-by-word translation and IPA transcription of the published versions of the French libretto, and her translations of its literary sources trace the libretto's development from E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Tales." The Guide includes an interview with French opera specialist Janine Reiss, and a Foreword by Thomas Grubb. This well-rounded volume is designed for use by singers, vocal coaches, conductors, producers and directors, as well as opera-lovers.

This early work by E. T. A. Hoffmann was originally published in 1885 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. This selection of Hoffmann's finest short stories vividly demonstrates his intense imagination and preoccupation with the supernatural, placing him at the forefront of both surrealism and the modern horror genre. Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann was born in Königsberg, East Prussia in 1776. His family were all jurists, and during his youth he was initially encouraged to pursue a career in law. However, in his late teens Hoffman became increasingly interested in literature and philosophy, and spent much of his time reading German classicists and attending lectures by, amongst others, Immanuel Kant.

Collects twenty-nine classic nineteenth-century horror tales from American, Irish, British, and European authors, with author information and explanatory notes.

Hoffmann is among the greatest and most popular of the German Romantics. This selection, while stressing the variety of his work, puts in the foreground those tales in which the real and the supernatural are brought into contact and conflict. The humour of these tales is a result of the incongruity of supernatural beings at large in an ostentatiously everyday world. They include The Golden Pot, recognized as Hoffmann's masterpiece by himself and posterity; its spine-chilling companion tale, The Sandman, which Offenbach drew on for his opera Tales of Hoffmann, and which Freud examines in his essay `The Uncanny'; two longer and more elaborate fantasies, set respectively in Germany and Italy; and the late story, My Cousin's Corner Window, which shows the powers of the imagination being applied to everyday urban life, and marks a transition in European literature generally from Romanticism to Realism. Ritchie Robertson's detailed introduction places the stories in their intellectual and historical context and explores their compelling narrative complexities.