In 1881, the posthumous premiere of Jacques Offenbach’s final work, an opera entitled “The Tales of Hoffmann,” had been announced for February 1st at the Opera Comique in Paris—and was, in fact, performed there on that date, but as a closed dress rehearsal attended only by theater staff and Offenbach’s family.

Offenbach knew he was dying when he wrote this opera, and hoped its success would provide royalty payments for his family after he was gone. Before he died in 1880, Offenbach completed the opera’s full piano score and extensive sketches for its orchestration. For its 1881 premiere, Ernest Guiraud faithfully orchestrated “Hoffmann,” but, at the request of the Opera Comique’s director, replaced the original, quick-paced spoken dialogue between its musical numbers with slower, SUNG recitatives in the style of a French grand opera.

At the February 1st dress rehearsal, the opera ran much too long. In something of a panic, drastic cuts and a wholesale rearrangement of Offenbach’s score were made before the public premiere nine days later. But even in drastically altered form, “Hoffmann” proved a great success, and remained so for decades. For the opera’s centenary in 1981, however, musicologists painstakingly prepared new performing versions of “Hoffmann,” restoring Offenbach’s original plan for the work.

Consequently, opera companies today are faced with a dilemma: do they stage the familiar—or the faithful—version of Offenbach’s masterpiece?