dove has flown.” Her father, Crespel, comes in, begging her to leave off singing, for her mother died singing. She promises him to give up singing and leaves the room. Crespel gives his orders to the servant to allow no one to enter during his absence. But hardly has he been gone a few minutes when the servant disobeys his master’s orders and admits Hoffmann.

Antonia returns, and the two young lovers burst into a sweet song, the promise she gave her father having slipped from Antonia’s mind in the flood of her happiness. Only, she makes so great an effort that she nearly faints. She withdraws to her chamber when her father returns, and Hoffmann hides behind one of the curtains to discover, if he can find a way to it, the secret lying behind his beloved’s strange conduct.

Then enters the evil genius, known in this act as Doctor “Miracle” — a strange figure whose province is the occult and magic. After announcing that he will cure Antonia of what ails her, he draws up a chair and addresses his words to it as though Antonia were seated upon it, and presently

her voice echoes in song from the chamber in answer to his bidding. Crespel is terrified, and the doctor is compelled to go out with him. Antonia returns to the room, and Hoffmann implores her to give up singing; she yields to him in sorrow and grief, and then he leaves her to herself.

But the doctor returns, appearing by magic, and casts over the poor girl a wicked spell, pressing her insistently to sing; he makes life stir in a portrait of her mother, which entreats her to sing, saying: “Dear daughter, you whom I call.” Then Antonia surrenders and pours forth song with ardor and frenzy, while the doctor takes up a violin and plays upon it a devilish playing, fiery sparks flying from its strings. Antonia falls upon the seat, a body without a soul. Her father returns at the fitting moment and clasps her cold body; after him comes Hoffmann, and Crespel — his fury blazing and his grief overflowing — falls upon him with a knife; but Nicklausse appears once more to save his friend. Doctor “Miracle” had vanished at Antonia’s death; and behold, he appears for the last time, by magic, announcing the death of his patient. Hoffmann cries out in despair as the curtain falls: “Antonia!”

The Epilogue

The scene: Luther’s tavern.

These are the tales of Hoffmann, and here is Hoffmann sitting in the tavern as in the prologue. The students are singing their beautiful drinking song. But Hoffmann has drunk to excess, and his eyelids have grown heavy. During his telling of his tales, the opera being given at the neighboring theater has come to an end, and the applause of the audience is heard, and cries of “Stella! Stella!”

Nicklausse offers an observation: that Hoffmann’s three loves are in truth only one — Stella, who is three women in one woman. And the dreaming Hoffmann sees a vision showing the goddess of poetry offering him the calm and serenity of art in place of the pains of passion and infatuation. Soon Stella comes in, searching for him; but he is in a deep drunken slumber from which waking is difficult.

The spirit of evil triumphs anew, and Stella goes out in the company of Lindorf...