ABSTRACT
The post-Senecan tradition initiated by Pierre Corneille was continued in the last major Medee before Hoffman and Luigi Cherubini – the tragedy by Hilaire-Bernard de Requelyne, Baron Longepierre. Hoffman wrote his libretto at the time of the French Revolution, and a fresh look at the plot and characters was needed, to reanimate the myth in terms to which a new, republican society could relate. Hoffman's libretto gave Cherubini the opportunity to once more present the story of Medea at Corinth as a tragedy, not a melodrama of intrigue. Hoffman's changes to the characters are even more important than his changes to the plot. Hoffman's is also the first version of the story since Euripides to restore the balance of sympathy to Medee, and to depict her violently fluctuating emotions in detail. Cherubini and Hoffman show a Medee who is utterly absorbed, in the last moments before the murder of her children, by her vengeance and her power.
