Mad Loves: Women and Music in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann Hardcover - 2000

First line

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY librettist, at least before the advent of Literaturoper, was not expected to treat literary sources with any particular reverence, and among librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carre have an unusually poor reputation in this regard.

From the rear cover

"Mad Loves offers us a prolonged meditation on Offenbach's final masterpiece, one in which we are often reminded, both elegantly and persuasively, of the diversity of cultural messages an opera can carry. This is one of the most impressive examples of operatic criticism to have appeared in the past decade, and a book that will definitely appeal to a broad range of opera enthusiasts."--Roger Parker, St. John's College, Cambridge

"Heather Hadlock has produced a charming book on one of the central operas of the standard repertory. Mad Loves engages with the pleasures afforded by Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, that is, it does not ignore the basis for the piece's popularity in an attempt at salvaging it for the sake of formalist music theory. Yet it also interrogates key aspects of the opera in ways that open it up to serious cultural criticism. The book should attract, stimulate, and delight both scholars from across the humanities and the many opera enthusiasts who love to read about their favorite works."--Susan McClary, University of California, Los Angeles