Personalities | E.T.A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus) Hoffmann | High Romantic | Opera
1776–1822, German
E.T.A. Hoffmann, the German novelist, critic, composer and conductor was among the most influential literary figures of the Romantic movement. He was the first to suggest that Mozart’s Don Giovanni was a Romantic rather than a Classical opera because of its strong associations between love and death. Hoffmann wrote several operas with dialogue, notably Undine (1816), as well as important critical works on Romanticism and numerous stories, many of which were used as a basis for over two dozen operas by various composers. Among them was Adolphe Adam (1803–56), who took his La poupée de Nuremberg (‘The Doll of Nuremberg’, 1852) from Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (‘The Sandman’, 1816). Der Sandmann, together with two other Hoffmann stories, with the German author himself as the central character, were used by Offenbach for his last opera, Les contes d’Hoffmann. Hoffmann also featured as a character in three twentieth-century operas.
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