[1] She studied literature and musicology and received her first vocal training from Lila Robeso, then with Friedrich Schorr and Giuseppe Gentile as well as Mario Basiola in Rome.
She appeared as a guest at La Scala in Milan in 1955, in the role of Fricka in Wagner's Die Walküre, opposite Martha Mödl, Wolfgang Windgassen, and Hans Hotter.
She returned to the Met in 1971, again in Tristan und Isolde, now opposite Jess Thomas, Birgit Nilsson, and John Macurdy, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf.
[1] From 1957 to 1970, Hoffman performed at the Bayreuth Festival in her signature role as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde (1957–59, 1966, 1968–70), as well as in Der Ring des Nibelungen as Siegrune (1958, 1960–64), Waltraute (1960–61, 1964, 1968–69), the Second Norn (1961–64) and Fricka (1962–64), in 1967–68 also as Ortrud in Lohengrin.
Hoffman also sang Dorabella in Così fan Tutte (1960), Kostelnička in Jenůfa (1963, in German), Waltraute and the Second Norn in Götterdämmerung (1967), and Klitämnestra in Elektra (1975).
[1][6] In 1988, she appeared as Mother Wesener in Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten at the Opéra du Rhin, a role she again played at the Vienna State Opera in 1990.
[1] Among her other recordings are Brangäne in excerpts from Tristan und Isolde with Birgit Nilsson, conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch in 1959 for Decca, Herodias in Salome, with Nilsson, led by Sir Georg Solti, for Decca in 1961; Amneris in excerpts from Aida, led by Sir John Pritchard, with Nilsson, Luigi Ottolini, and Louis Quilico, in 1963 for Decca; Gertrud in Hänsel und Gretel, conducted by André Cluytens, for EMI in 1963–64; and Messiah, led by Otto Klemperer, with Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Nicolai Gedda, and Jerome Hines, for EMI in 1965.