Michael Powell began the project after hearing Thomas Beecham playing the score on piano and singing all of the parts.
Robert Rounseville (Hoffmann) and 'Ann Ayars' (Antonia) are the only performers in the film who both appear on screen and do their own singing. Every other character is dubbed.
George A. Romero, writer/director of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead has cited "The Tales of Hoffman" as his all-time favorite movie, saying that it was the movie that originally inspired him to get into film-making.