Offenbach Opera The Tales of Hoffmann

Le Contes d'Hoffmann, a French opera by Jacques Offenbach. The Tales of Hoffmann opera plot synopsis, character description, and other Offenbach opera information.

The Tales of Hoffmann (Les Contes d'Hoffmann) is a fantastic three-act opera composed by Jacques Offenbach (June 20, 1819 – October 5, 1880.) Libretto is written by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré based on E.T.A. Hoffmann stories. It was premiered at the Opéra Comique, Paris, on February 10th, 1881. The setting is in Nuremberg, Paris, Munich and Venice in the early 19th century.

Notable Arias: "Scintille diamante" (Dappertutto), "Elle a fui" (Antonia,) "Jour et nuit" (Franz,) and "Il était une fois à la cour d'Eisenbach" (Hoffmann.)

Pearl S. Buck

Literature / Writers Datebook: June 26

 

Brief biography of American novelist Pearl S. Buck, famous for The Good Earth

Pearl S Buck was a prolific novelist of remarkable intelligence. She earned three university degrees, adopted nine children of different nationalities, and wrote more than 80 books. A Pulitzer Prize winner, in 1938 she also became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. 

 

Early Years of Pearl Buck

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia on June 26, 1892. Her parents, Caroline and Absalom Sydenstricker, worked as Presbyterian missionaries in China, and the family moved there when she was only a few months old.

Being foreigners, their lives were sometimes in danger because many of the Chinese had become suspicious of foreigners for that matter. That was the time of the Boxer Rebellion or Boxer Movement, an uprising by members of the Chinese Society of Right and Harmonious Fists against foreign influence. The campaign took place from November 1899 to September 7, 1901 under the Qing Dynasty in the final years of Manchu rule in China. The Bucks stayed on and lived among the local people.

 

Mid-Years: Education and Family

Buck learned to speak Chinese before English and she only returned to the United States until she was eighteen years old. After graduating from university, she moved back to China with her missionary husband, John Buck, who she married in 1917. They had one child, a daughter, who was born disabled.

 

Successful Author

Buck's first novel, East Wind: West Wind, was published when she was thirty-eight years old. A year later her most famous book, The Good Earth, followed. It is a novel about the struggles of a poor Chinese farmer and became a bestseller, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. She was the first person from a Western country to write about Chinese people in a sympathetic and understanding way.

 

Later years

Following the breakdown of her marriage in 1934, she divorced her first husband, John, and returned to America, later remarrying her publisher, and setting up a charity to help disadvantaged Asian-American children. She died on March 6, 1973, aged 80.

 

Books by Pearl S. Buck

East Wind: West wind, 1930

The Good Earth, 1931

Sons, 1932

A House Divided, 1935

The Exile, 1936

Fighting Angel, 1936

Water Buffalo children, 1943

The Christmas Ghost, 1960

The Three Daughters of Madame Liang, 1969

 

Photo credit:

Pearl S. Buck. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain.  Pearl Buck, c. 1950. Gelatin silver print of Pearl S. Buck, 26 Jun 1892 - 6 Mar 1973 by Clara Sipprell, 31 Oct 1885 - 27 Dec 1975. Accessed June 26, 2024.

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994  

 

(c) June 2009. Updated June 26, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

George Orwell

Literature / Writer's Datebook: June 25

Brief biography and works of George Orwell, English novelist and essayist, author of classic novels '1984' and 'Animal Farm.'  

George Orwell, English novelist and essayist, is famous for his two novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Recognized as one of the greatest English essayists, he is known for his Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, published in four volumes.    

Animal Farm contains the memorable phrase "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" – a classic quote of political satire. 

 

Early Life of Orwell: Education and Odd Jobs

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. He was born in India (June 25, 1903 – January 21, 1950), to English parents and was taken to England as a child. He was brought up in an upper-middle class and educated at Eton College.

Orwell served in the Imperial Police in Burma for five years from 1922. Upon his return to Europe, he took a series of poorly paid jobs, while trying to get his writing published. He became a socialist during those years. He described this period of his life in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, published when he was 30. His novel The Round to Wigan Pier highlights an angry study of the grinding poverty especially in the North of England's working classes at that time. 

 

Later Life: The Spanish Civil War

Orwell fought on the left-wing Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and was wounded. Despite his left-wing views, his experiences made him dislike the communists, who backed the Republicans, and he attacked them in Homage to Catalonia, an account of experiences fighting for the Republican Government. He was unfit for military service in World War II and worked for the BBC.

Toward the end of the war he wrote Animal Farm, a grim allegory of the history of the Soviet Union in which farm animals create a revolutionary state that goes terribly wrong. It depicts the betrayal of a revolution. The farm animals overthrow their human rulers, but eventually the pigs take over the former role of the humans. 

 

Final Years

Orwell died from tuberculosis at the age of 46, soon after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, on of his most famous book that describes a nightmare life under the dictatorship of a party leader, known as "Big Brother" who constantly reminds his people: "Big Brother is watching you," an even more grim picture of a future totalitarian world.  

 

Books by George Orwell

Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933

Burmese Days, 1934

A Clergyman's Daughter, 935

Keep the Aspidistra Flying, 1936

The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937

Homage to Catalonia, 1938

Coming up for Air, 1939

Animal Farm, 1945

Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949

 

Image Credit:

George Orwell. NNDB.com / Public Domain

 

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers (2002)

Dictionary of Literature, Brockhampton Press (1995)

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse (1994)   

 

(c) June 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved. 

Alan Turing and the Colossus Computer

Science / Scientists Datebook: June 23

 

Brief history of the Colossus Computer, and a profile of Alan Turing, the scientist who headed the team that decoded the German's Enigma Code, and the cryptographer behind it.

Alan Turing, a mathematical and scientific wizard, is considered the father of modern computer science. He worked as a cryptographer decoding codes in one of the British government's top-secret location at Bletchley Park. Military historians say that Turing's work in breaking the Enigma code machine used by the Germans used during World War II shortened the war by two to three years, aside from saving lives and averting more catastrophe from happening.

 

Early Life

Alan Mathison Turing was born in London on June 23, 1912. Early on in his life, he showed his interest in science and scientific genius was evident. In 1931, he entered King's College, Cambridge University, where he focused on mathematics and re-creating the work of other scientists.

At one point, he started to develop a digital computer dubbed the "Turing machine." The key was to instruct the computer properly and then for it to perform the tasks. He believed that an "algorithm" could be developed to solve any problem.

The Enigma Code Machine

During the 1920s, the Germans created the Enigma code machine, which led them to believe that their coded messages concerning military and other top secret operations were beyond being decoded. The machine, which resembled a typewriter, was capable of doing millions of calculations in milliseconds, and the secret codes that controlled them were regularly changed everyday.

Enters Turing's "Colossus" 

However in the 1930s, Polish mathematicians had obtained a machine and started to try to break it as they felt it might be a good asset against any invasion, in particular, a most likely invasion from the Germans.

Turing undertook the construction work of a special-purpose electronic machine all the  way. In January 1943, he headed up a team of scientists whose specific goal was to try to break Enigma's code. To do so, the team developed a computer – called the "Colossus" comprising 1,500 vacuum tubes. Improved models were later installed. Experts today think that a total of 10 Colossuses were built. The fact that it helped break the Enigma code was the breakthrough that instantly became the greatest secret of the Second World War. This meant that the Allies knew exactly what the Germans planned to do before they did it, an utmost important as it helped the Allies decide where to invade on D day.

The Turing Test

After the war, Turing worked on various machines that would replace or supersede human intelligence, the inspiration said to be the loss of a young love in his life. He wrote a paper in 1950 now known as the "Turing test," which evaluates a machine's intelligence, a test still considered the standard by which mechanical intelligence is evaluated. 

The genius vs. his personal life

His homosexuality was not an issue during the war, but in general, it was looked down after the war as the political and emotional landscape changed with the development of Great Britain's alliance with the United States and the development of the Cold War. 

He might have been feted and revered for what he did, and yet, at the age of 42, his heart broken and his mind in disarray due to the loss of his security clearance – apparently due to his homosexuality - he ended his life and committed suicide. What a waste of his intellect to humanity. 

Turing's legacy

The Colossus computer was one of the world's earliest programmable electronic digital computers. Today Turing's computer designs, as he described them, are still what computer specialists utilize. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. For a time he led Hut 8, the section that was responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war "Polish bombe method", an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. He played a pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic, therefore, helped win the war.   

 

Photo credit:

Alan Turing. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Alan Turing (1912-1954) in 1936 at Princeton University. 

Resources:

Alan Turing. en.wikipedia.org

Chambers Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002

Quantum Leaps by Jon Balchin, Capella, London, 2004 

The 100 Greatest Inventions of All Time, by Ton Philbin, Citadel Press, New York, 2003

 

(c) June 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.  

Jacques Offenbach

Classical Music / Composers Datebook: June 20

Brief biography of Jacques Offenbach – his life, operettas and other works. Hailed as 'The Mozart of Champs-Elysees' and 'Father of French Operetta', he is famous for his masterpiece and only opera 'The Tales of Hoffman' completed by Giraud.

 

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), French composer, cellist and impressario, of German origin, was one of the two outstanding composers in popular music of the 19th-century, the other one was Johann Strauss Junior. He is best known for his only opera Les contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffman) with its fantasy and appealing melody. Offenbach had a rare gift for catchy tunes particularly in dance rhythms. He had been dubbed as 'Father of French Operetta' and 'The Mozart of  Champs-Élysees.'

 

Earlier Years

Jacques Offenbach was born on June 20, 1819, in Cologne, Kingdom of Prussia, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire; He found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year, but remained in Paris. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical theatre. Finding the management of Paris's Opéra-Comique company uninterested in staging his works, in 1855 he leased a small theatre in the Champs-Élysées. There, during the next three years, he presented a series of more than two dozen of his own small-scale pieces, many of which became popular. 

 

Jacques Hoffmann's The Tales of Hoffmann.  Youtube, uploaded by Altea Media / I Love TV. Accessed June 20, 2024. Opera in 3 acts, with prologue and epilogue libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on three short stories by E.T.A. Hoffman premiered in Paris, Opéra Comique, February 10, 1881. Director: Jean-Louis Grinda. Hoffmann: Juan Diego Florez.  Chorus of the Monte-Carlo Opera Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra Musical direction: Jacques Lacombe.

 

The Composer

Offenbach's music was known for his cheerful and exuberant music. He career began with some years of experience as a solo and orchestral cellist, and a year study at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1850 he became a theatre conductor and five years later, he got his own stage works performed. He started working on Tales of Hoffmann in the 1870s leaving it unfinished when he died of a heart attack in Paris. The score was completed by Ernest Guiraud in 1881, with a posthumous premiere presentation.

In spite the popularity of Tales of Hoffmann, Offenbach's most significant achievements and international success lie in the operettas (“little operas”) he wrote in the 1860s for Bouffes Parisiens (Parisian Comedy), a company he owned which staged shows in a small theatre he rented in fashionable Champs-Elysees.

Through him the operetta became an established International genre evolving into the 20th-century, heavily influencing Arthur Sullivan and Franz Lehar, among others.

He created more than hundreds of scores for the theatre, some of the noteworthy ones are  Orphee aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld), best-known for its famous overture and can-can, La Belle Helene (Beautiful Helen), Barbe-Bleue (Bluebeard) and La Vie Parisienne (Parisian Life), La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein (Grand Duchess of Gerolstein) and Le Perichole. 

 

Offenbach died in Paris, October 5, 1880. 

 

Offenbach's Legacy

Jacques Offenbach is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Franz von Suppé, Johann Strauss II and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. The Tales of Hoffmann remains part of the standard opera repertory.  

Offenbach's Operettas

Le marriage aux lanterns  1853

Les Deux aveugles (The Two Blind Men)  1855

Orpheé aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld)  1858  (This was later revised)

La Belle Hélene  1864

Barbe-Blue (Bluebeard)  1866

La Vie Parisienne  1866

La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein)  1867

La Périchole  1868

Madame Favart  (1878)

 

Offenbach's Opera

Les Contes d'Hoffman (The Tales of Hoffmann), orchestration was completed posthumously by Ernest Guiraud  1880. This opera is based on the strange tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann, a German writer. One of Offenbach's most popular and enchanting melodies "Barcarolle" is included.  

 

Photo credit:

Jacques Offenbach by Nadar. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. 

 

Resources:

1. Jacques Offenbach. en.wikipedia.org.

2. Latham, Alison, Ed.  The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford: OUP, 2002

3. Sadie, Stanley, Ed. The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music.  London: Macmillan Publishers, 1994.

4. Sadie, Stanley, Ed. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition. London: Macmillan Publishers, 2000

 

(c) June 2009. Updated June 20, 2024. Tel Asiado. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

A Brief Insight of Vienna Blood by Frank Tallis

19 September 2009

Something about F. Tallis's Vienna Blood

(A good read especially for Wolfgang Mozart fans)


Liz Ringrose: Guest Reviewer


I was recently recommended to read a novel by Frank Tallis: Vienna Blood.

The person said I should read it because I'm a Mozart fan. I didn't see the significance of this as I began to read but it became clear as the plot developed. To say anymore than that would be giving too much away to anyone who wants to read it.

History of Espresso Coffee

Where some of us live, espresso accounts for almost all of the commercialized cafés and coffeehouses. We might have been denied that heavenly smell of hot espresso coffee had not for a blessing of Pope Clement VIII.

A popular legend says that around 850 AD, an Ethiopian shepherd noticed his stock to be more active after eating the red berries of a small shrub. He tries some himself and noticed his remarkable surge in energy.


In 1475, the world's first café opens in Constantinople. It's been said that Turkish law allows women to divorce their husbands if they were not provided with a daily cup of coffee. For years, the Muslim world had the monopoly of the heavenly brew. Their love of the potent black liquid led the governments to forbid coffee from being transported out of their own territories.

William Butler Yeats

Literature / Poet Datebook: June 13 
 
Life and works of Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, one of the most influential 20^th century writers and widely considered one of the greatest poets of the English language.

 

 

William Butler Yeats' work was greatly influenced by the heritage and politics of Ireland.Yeats won the Nobel Prize of literature in 1923. He is best known for his plays The Land of Heart's Desire and Cathleen Ni Houlihan.

Early Life of W.B. Yeats
 
William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865 in Sandymount, Dublin. His family was Anglo-Irish, that is, Protestant upper class that felt strong ties to England. His father, John B. Yeats, a painter, moved the family to London when he was three. So, for much of his early life he lived sometimes in London and sometimes in Ireland, but he was always attached to his homeland, especially captivated by the landscape of County Sligo in northwestern Ireland.
 
Yeats was half-blind in one eye; he didn't do well in school. At the age of 15, his family moved back to Ireland, to Howth on Dublin Bay. Five years later, the Dublin University Review published his first two poems.

Enjoy this wonderful performance, beautiful and heartwarming interpretation by Australian soprano Taryn Fiebig and harpist Jayne Hockley of W.B. Yeats' "Down by the Salley Gardens", from the Album Thyme & Roses, licensed by The Orchard Music (on behalf of MBT Publishing); Imagem Music (publishing) US, and 1 music rights societies. (YouTube, uploaded by artandcode. Accessed May 29, 2018.)




The Young Poet
 
In London he became increasingly interested in Eastern philosophy and religions, the supernatural and Irish folklore. It was also this time in 1889 that Yeats fell in love with Maud Gonne, a beautiful Irish actress who was involved in the political struggle to end English rule in Ireland. His inability of attaining Maud would haunt him through his life. He proposed in 1891 and again in 1916 but was refused both times.
 
His mystical beliefs and love for Gonne inspired The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, published when he was 24. The poetry is filled with sad longings yet beautiful. Yeats believed that the Anglo-Irish and Irish could be united under a rich although mystical Celtic heritage. 

Below, I'd like to share one of my favourite poems by Yeats:

 

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

~ W.B. Yeats ~

(Link credit: "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", poets.org)

Kind thanks to Ilse Isler, my friend at Facebook, for this straightforward heartwarming paraphrase: 

 

"If I could offer you the secret of the sky
Embroidered with golden light and silver reflections,
The mysterious secret, the eternal secret
of night and day, of life and time
With all my Love I will put it on your feet!"

 
Later Years
 
In 1896 Yeats returned to live permanently in Ireland. He met a wealthy aristocrat, Lady Gregory, whose interest in Irish traditions matched his own. Together in 1904 they formed the Abbey Theatre group.
 
In a Vision, Yeats set out his philosophy, his belief in myths and the meanings of the symbols he used. As he aged, his writing became stronger and more solid. His best work is in The Tower, The Winding Stair and Last Poems and Plays. The Tower includes some of his famous works, including "Sailing to Byzantium," "Among School Children," and "Leda and the Swan."
 
Legacy of W.B. Yeats
 
Yeats founded the National Literary Society and what would become the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Yeats received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1923. He also served as an Irish Free State senator for six years.  He died on January 28, 1939, aged 73.
 
Works by William Butler Yeats 
 
The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, 1889
The Celtic Twilight, 1893
The Land of Heart's Desire, 1894
The Secret Rose, 1897
Cathleen Ni Houlihan, 1902
The Second Coming, 1921
A Vision, 1925
The Tower, 1928
The Winding Stair, 1928
Last Poems and Plays, 1936-39

A famous poem by Yeats: "Down by the Salley Gardens"

"Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she lay her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears."



Resources: 


Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994
The Cambridge Literature in English, New Edition, edited by Ian Ousby,Cambridge, 1993

Photo Credit:

W.B. Yeats. en.wikipedia.org / Public Domain  

Note:  This article was originally written and published by me for Suite101.com, June 16, 2008. It's an abridged version. / Tel

 
(c) June 2009. Updated August 27, 2023.  Tel. Inspired Pen Web.  All rights reserved. 

Cole Porter

 Musicals / Composers Datebook: June 9 

Brief biography of melodist Cole Porter, one of the greatest lyricists, composers, and songwriters on stage and films.  

Cole Albert Porter, prominent Broadway composer of the 20th-century, was an inventive and witty lyricist, and an ingenious songwriter who produced some of the most sophisticated songs of American music, popular to this day.  He has a list of unforgettable songs like "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye," "In the Still of the Night," "Begin the Beguine," "Kiss Me Kate," and "I Love Paris."  

 

Early life: law training

American composer and lyricist Cole Albert Porter was born rich in his family's large farm on June 9, 1891, in Peru, Indiana. Unlike other known musicians, he composed for pleasure rather than necessity. His grandfather who made a fortune in lumber saw to it that his grandson got a quality education in law. He was educated at Worcester Academy, Yale University and Harvard Law School. 

 

The talented musician

Porter showed his musical talent and interest when he was young, in fact, he started writing songs by the age of ten and produced on Broadway by the time he was 21, in 1912.  However, his formal studies in music only began in 1915 when he started at Harvard School of Music and with Vincent d'Indy in Paris, in 1919. Before this, he had a period at law school and the French Foreign Legion. 

 

Musical career: stage, film, and songs

The rest of his life was spent in Hollywood, in Broadway, and traveling around the world in style. Porter's career in music spanned an impressive five decades resulting in over 800 songs written for 26 Broadway shows and another 18 films. He composed a number of musicals, often to his own lyrics.

 His first stage production in New York was See America First, in 1916. Success after another followed. His first one was with Wake Up and Dream (1929, London), then a long series of Broadway musicals and films.

His songs like Night and Day, What is this Thing Called Love?, Begin the Beguine, Let’s Do It (1928), I Get a Kick Out of You (1934), and Don’t Fence Me In (1944) have been widely recorded and admired.

Among other film successes were Gay Divorce (1932) and Anything Goes (1934) where he came up with "All Through the Night," "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You, and the title song.  

Porter wrote music for films such as True Love from the hit movie ‘High Society’ starring Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra.  Considered his finest musical is Kiss Me, Kate (1948). 

 

Life turning point

While in Paris in 1937, he shattered his legs when a horse fell on him, leaving him crippled for the rest of his life.

For an artist who didn't do much to change the direction of the musical theatre, Cole Porter trail-blazed in areas of lyric writing.  He died in Santa Monica, October 15, 1964.

 

Photo credit:

Cole Porter. Wikipedia Commons. Porter in the 1930s

Resources:

The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan Press, 1984

Bibliographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002

Word Crazy: Broadway Lyricists form Cohan to Sondheim by Thomas S. Hischak, Praeger, 1991

 

(c) June 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.