François Benoît Hoffmann

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François Benoît Hoffmann (July 11, 1760 – April 25, 1828) was a French playwright and critic, best known today for his operatic librettos.

Hoffmann was born in Nancy, and studied law at the University of Strasbourg. However, a slight hesitation in his speech precluded success at the bar, 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 Luneville over which the Marquis de Boufflers then presided. In 1784 he went to Paris, and two years later produced the opera Phèdre. His opera Adrien (1792) was objected to by the government on political grounds, and Hoffmann, who refused to make the changes proposed to him, ran considerable risk under the revolutionary government. His later operas, which were numerous, were produced at the Opéra-Comique. In 1807 he was invited by Charles Guillaume Étienne to contribute to the Journal de l'Empire (afterwards the Journal des Débats). Hoffmann's wide reading qualified him to write on all sorts of subjects, and he turned, apparently with no difficulty, from reviewing books on medicine to violent attacks on the Jesuits. His severe criticism of Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs led the author to make some changes in a later edition. He had the reputation of being an absolutely conscientious and incorruptible critic and thus exercised wide influence.

Among his numerous plays are best remembered a well-regarded one-act comedy, Le Roman d'une heure (1803), and an amusing one-act opera, Les Rendez-vous bourgeois.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.