Fritz Oeser

Fritz Oeser was a German musicologist and editor whose critical editions set out to recover what composers had cut under pressure. His Carmen, published in 1964, restored a great deal that Bizet had removed during rehearsals, on the argument that those cuts were forced on him rather than chosen. Opera houses took it up readily and scholars attacked it with equal energy, objecting that it mixed sources and supplied solutions of its own. He did much the same for Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, and much the same argument followed.