François Benoît Hoffmann

François-Benoît Hoffman (11 July 1760 – 25 April 1828) was a French playwright and critic, best known today for his operatic librettos, including those set to music by Étienne Méhul and Luigi Cherubini (most notably Cherubini's Médée, 1797).

Hoffman was born in Nancy, and studied law at the University of Strasbourg. However, his stammer hindered his legal career, and he entered military service in Corsica. He served there for only a very short time, and, returning to Nancy, wrote some poems which brought him into notice at the little court of Lunéville over which the Marquise de Boufflers then presided. In 1784 he went to Paris where he wrote his first opera libretto, Phèdre, for the composer Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne. It was performed at Fontainebleau in October 1786. After quarrelling with Lemoyne, Hoffman offered his libretto Adrien, empereur de Rome to Cherubini, who turned it down in favour of another Hoffman drama, Médée. Adrien was accepted instead by Méhul, with whom Hoffman collaborated on several operas, including Euphrosine (1790), Stratonice (1792) and Ariodant (1799).

Hoffman was a strong advocate of authors' rights regarding artistic control, copyright and freedom of speech. This stance often brought him into conflict with the authorities. A quarrel with the management of the Paris Opéra over Nephté led to them rejecting Médée in 1790. In 1792, the French Revolutionary government objected to Adrien on political grounds, and Hoffman ran considerable risk by refusing to make the changes proposed to him. It was seven years before Adrien finally received its premiere at the Opéra.

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