The Kaye edition opens with the well-known and beloved 'Barcarolle' but soon ventures into unfamiliar territory and continues with fresh material right up to its violent end.

The most notable changes from what was previously known are in Act 3, usually known as the 'Giulietta' or 'Venetian' act and often incorrectly performed as Act 2. Offenbach-Kaye, which will have the last of three performances in Boston tonight and will be released soon in a Philips recording, seems to be about as close as we will ever come to an 'Offenbach-period' text. If operatic productions were subject to truth-in-labeling laws, 'Hoffmann' programs would credit not merely Offenbach but 'Offenbach-Guiraud,' 'Offenbach-Bloch,' 'Offenbach-Oeser' or even 'Offenbach-Guiraud-Bloch-Oeser' in tribute to the various tinkerers who have made substantial changes in Offenbach's sadly unfinished text. The opera surely would have been even better if Offenbach had lived to give it his finishing touches - he died four months before its premiere in February 1881.

Kaye's reconstruction, from thousands of pages of manuscript sketches and other documents, has a dramatic focus that is missing in the versions usually performed, and the Boston Lyric Opera brought out the work's qualities effectively. BOSTON - Much of what we knew about Jacques Offenbach's 'Tales of Hoffmann' became obsolete Friday night, when the new critical edition by Washington musicologist Michael Kaye had its first complete performance.

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