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Jacques Offenbach (Template:IPAc-en;Template:Refn 20 June 1819Template:Spnd5 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Franz von Suppé, Johann Strauss II and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. The Tales of Hoffmann remains part of the standard opera repertory.
Born in Cologne, Kingdom of Prussia, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire; he found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year, but remained in Paris. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical theatre. Finding the management of Paris's Template:Langr company uninterested in staging his works, in 1855 he leased a small theatre in the Template:Langr. There, during the next three years, he presented a series of more than two dozen of his own small-scale pieces, many of which became popular.
In 1858 Offenbach produced his first full-length operetta, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("Orpheus in the Underworld"), with its celebrated can-can; the work was exceptionally well received and has remained his most played. During the 1860s, he produced at least eighteen full-length operettas, as well as more one-act pieces. His works from this period include {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1864), {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1866), {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1867) and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1868). The risqué humour (often about sexual intrigue) and mostly gentle satiric barbs in these pieces, together with Offenbach's facility for melody, made them internationally known, and translated versions were successful in Vienna, London, elsewhere in Europe and in the US.
Offenbach became associated with the Second French Empire of Napoleon III: the emperor and his court were genially satirised in many of Offenbach's operettas, and Napoleon personally granted him French citizenship and the Template:Langr. With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and the fall of the empire, Offenbach found himself out of favour in Paris because of his imperial connections and his German birth. He remained successful in Vienna, London and New York. He re-established himself in Paris during the 1870s, with revivals of some of his earlier favourites and a series of new works, and undertook a popular US tour. In his last years he strove to finish The Tales of Hoffmann, but died before the premiere of the opera, which has entered the standard repertory in versions completed or edited by other musicians. Template:TOC limit
Life and careerEdit
Early yearsEdit
Offenbach was born on 20 June 1819, as Jacob (or JakobTemplate:Refn) Offenbach to a Jewish family in the German city of Cologne, which was then a part of Prussia.<ref>Gammond, p. 13</ref> His birthplace in the Template:Langr was a short distance from the square that is now named after him, the Template:Langr.<ref name=grove>Template:Cite Grove Template:Subscription required</ref> He was the second son and the seventh of ten children of Isaac Juda Offenbach Template:Né Eberst (1779–1850) and his wife Marianne Template:Née Rindskopf (Template:Circa–1840).<ref>Faris, p. 14</ref> Isaac, who came from a musical family, had abandoned his original trade as a bookbinder and earned an itinerant living as a cantor in synagogues and playing the violin in cafés.<ref>Faris, p. 17</ref> He was generally known as "Template:Langr", after his native town, Offenbach am Main, and in 1808 he officially adopted Offenbach as a surname.Template:Refn In 1816 he settled in Cologne, where he became established as a teacher, giving lessons in singing, violin, flute, and guitar, and composing both religious and secular music.<ref name=g15>Gammond, pp. 13 and 15</ref>
When Jacob was six years old his father taught him to play the violin; within two years the boy was composing songs and dances, and at the age of nine he took up the cello.<ref name=g15/> As Isaac was by then the permanent cantor of the local synagogue, he could afford to pay for his son to take lessons from the well-known cellist Bernhard Breuer. Three years later, the biographer Gabriel Grovlez records, the boy was giving performances of his own compositions, "the technical difficulties of which terrified his master", Breuer.<ref name=grovlez>Grovlez, Gabriel. "Jacques Offenbach: A Centennial Sketch", The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3 (July 1919), pp. 329–337 Template:JSTOR Template:Subscription required</ref> Together with his brother Julius (violin) and sister Isabella (piano), Jacob played in a trio at local dance halls, inns and cafés, performing popular dance music and operatic arrangements.<ref>Faris, p. 18</ref>Template:Refn In 1833 Isaac decided that his musically talented sons Julius and Jacob (then aged 18 and 14) needed to leave the provincial musical scene of Cologne to study in Paris. With generous support from local music lovers and the municipal orchestra, with whom they gave a farewell concert on 9 October, the two young musicians, accompanied by their father, made the four-day journey to Paris in November 1833.<ref>Faris, p. 19</ref>
Isaac had been given letters of introduction to the director of the Paris Conservatoire, Luigi Cherubini, but had to persuade Cherubini even to give Jacob an audition. The boy's age and nationality were both obstacles to admission.Template:Refn Cherubini had several years earlier refused the twelve-year-old Franz Liszt admission on similar grounds,<ref>Faris, p. 20</ref> but he eventually agreed to hear the young Offenbach play. He listened to his playing and stopped him, saying, "Enough, young man, you are now a pupil of this Conservatoire."<ref name=g17>Gammond, p. 17</ref> Julius was also admitted. Both brothers adopted French forms of their names, Julius becoming Jules and Jacob becoming Jacques.<ref>Harding, p. 19</ref>
Isaac hoped to secure permanent employment in Paris but failed to do so and returned to Cologne.<ref name=g17/> Before leaving, he found several pupils for Jules; the modest earnings from those lessons, supplemented by fees earned by both brothers as members of synagogue choirs, supported them during their studies. At the conservatoire, Jules was a diligent student; he graduated and became a successful violin teacher and conductor, and was {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} of his younger brother's orchestra for several years.<ref>Gammond, p. 18</ref> By contrast, Jacques was bored by academic study and left after a year. The conservatoire's roll of students notes against his name "Struck off on 2 December 1834 (left of his own free will)".<ref>Faris, p. 224</ref>Template:Refn
Cello virtuosoEdit
Having left the conservatoire, Offenbach was free from the stern academicism of Cherubini's curriculum, but as the biographer James Harding writes, "he was free, also, to starve".<ref>Harding, p. 21</ref> He secured a few temporary jobs in theatre orchestras before gaining a permanent appointment in 1835 as a cellist at the Template:Langr. He was no more serious there than he had been at the conservatoire, and regularly had his pay docked for playing pranks during performances; on one occasion, he and the principal cellist played alternate notes of the printed score, and on another they sabotaged some of their colleagues' music stands to make them collapse in mid-performance.<ref name=f21/> Nevertheless, the earnings from his orchestral work enabled him to take lessons with the celebrated cellist Louis-Pierre Norblin.<ref>Gammond, p. 19</ref> He made a favourable impression on the composer and conductor Fromental Halévy, who gave him lessons in composition and orchestration and wrote to Isaac Offenbach in Cologne that the young man was going to be a great composer.<ref>Gammond, pp. 19–20</ref> Some of Offenbach's early compositions were played by the fashionable conductor Louis-Antoine Jullien.<ref>Harding, p. 27</ref> Offenbach and another young composer, Friedrich von Flotow, collaborated in 1839 on a series of works for cello and piano.<ref name=grove/><ref>Faris, pp. 23 and 257</ref> Although Offenbach's ambition was to compose for the stage, he could not gain an entrée to Parisian theatre at this point in his career; with Flotow's help, he built a reputation composing for and playing in the fashionable salons of Paris.<ref>Faris, p. 23 and Gammond, pp. 22–23</ref> Through contacts he made there he gained pupils.<ref name=grove/> In 1838 the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} commissioned him to compose songs for the play {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, staged in March 1839.<ref>Yon, p. 44</ref> In January 1839, together with his elder brother, he gave his first public concert.<ref>Yon, p. 45</ref>
Among the salons at which Offenbach most frequently appeared, from 1839, was that of Madeleine-Sophie, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Yon, p. 43; and Schwarz, p. 45</ref> There he met Hérminie d'Alcain, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a Carlist general.<ref name=f28>Faris, p. 28</ref><ref>Yon, p. 62</ref> They fell in love, and in 1843 they became engaged, but he was not yet in a financial position to marry.<ref name=g28>Gammond, p. 28</ref> To extend his fame and earning power beyond Paris, he undertook tours of France and Germany.<ref>Yon, p. 59</ref> Among those with whom he performed were Anton Rubinstein and in September 1843 in a concert in Offenbach's native Cologne, Liszt.<ref name=grove/><ref>Yon, p. 59</ref> In 1844, probably through English family connections of Hérminie,<ref>Harding, p. 39</ref> he embarked on a tour of England. There, he was immediately engaged to appear with some of the most famous musicians of the day, including Felix Mendelssohn, Joseph Joachim, Michael Costa and Julius Benedict.<ref name=g28/> The Era wrote of his debut performance in London, "His execution and taste excited both wonder and pleasure, the genius he exhibited amounting to absolute inspiration."<ref>"Madame Puzzi's Concert", The Era, 19 May 1844, p. 5</ref> The British press reported a triumphant royal command performance; The Illustrated London News observed, "Herr Jacques Offenbach, the astonishing Violoncellist, performed on Thursday evening at Windsor before the Emperor of Russia, the King of Saxony, Queen Victoria, and Prince Albert with great success."<ref>The Illustrated London News, 8 June 1844, p. 370</ref> The use of the German "Template:Langr", reflecting the fact that Offenbach remained a Prussian citizen, was common to all the British press coverage of Offenbach's 1844 tour.<ref>"Varieties", The Manchester Guardian 12 June 1844, p. 5; and "Madame Dulcken's Concert", The Times, 12 June 1844, p. 7</ref> The ambiguity of his nationality sometimes caused him difficulty in later life when France and Prussia became enemies.<ref name=ashley/>
Offenbach returned to Paris with his reputation and his bank balance both much enhanced. The last remaining obstacle to his marriage to Hérminie was the difference in their professed religions; he converted to Roman Catholicism, with the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} acting as his sponsor. Isaac Offenbach's views on his son's conversion from Judaism are unknown.<ref name=h40>Harding, p. 40</ref> The wedding took place on 14 August 1844; the bride was seventeen years old, and the bridegroom was twenty-five.<ref name=h40/> The marriage was lifelong, and happy, despite some extramarital affairs on Offenbach's part.<ref>Harding, p. 52 and Faris, p. 103</ref>Template:Refn After Offenbach's death, a friend said that Hérminie "gave him courage, shared his ordeals and comforted him always with tenderness and devotion".<ref>De Joncières, Victorin, quoted in Gammond, p. 30</ref>
Returning to the familiar Paris salons, Offenbach gradually shifted the emphasis of his work from being a cellist who also composed to being a composer who also played the cello.<ref>Gammond, p. 30</ref> He had already published many compositions, and some of them had sold well, but now he began to write, perform and produce musical burlesques as part of his salon presentations.<ref name=g32>Gammond, p. 32</ref> He amused the comtesse de Vaux's 200 guests with a parody of Félicien David's currently fashionable {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and in April 1846 gave a concert at which seven operatic items of his own composition were premiered before an audience that included leading music critics.<ref name=g32/> The following year he staged his first operetta, the one-act {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. It had been written at the invitation of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, which had then failed to present it, and Offenbach mounted the production himself as part of an evening of his works at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Yon, p. 75</ref> He seemed on the verge of breaking into theatrical composition when the 1848 revolution broke out, sweeping Louis Philippe from the throne and leading to serious bloodshed in the streets of the capital. Three hundred and fifty people were killed within three days.<ref>Horne, pp. 225–226</ref> Offenbach hastily took Hérminie and their two-year-old daughter to join his family in Cologne. The city was experiencing its own nationalistic revolutionary upheaval and Offenbach found it expedient to change his forename back to the German while there.<ref>Gammond, p. 33</ref>
Returning to Paris in February 1849 Offenbach found the grand salons closed down. He went back to working as a cellist, and occasional conductor, at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, but was not encouraged in his aspirations to compose.<ref>Gammond, p. 34</ref> His talents had been noted by the director of the Comédie-Française, Arsène Houssaye, who appointed him musical director of the theatre in 1850, with a brief to enlarge and improve the orchestra.<ref>Harding, p. 51</ref> Offenbach composed songs and incidental music for eleven classical and modern dramas for the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in the early 1850s. Some of his songs became very popular, and he gained valuable experience in writing for the theatre. Houssaye later wrote that Offenbach had done wonders for his theatre,<ref>Harding, p. 54</ref> but the management of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} was uninterested in commissioning him to compose for its stage.<ref>Gammond, pp. 35–36</ref> The composer and critic Claude Debussy later wrote that the musical establishment could not cope with Offenbach's irony, which exposed the "false, overblown quality" of the operas they favoured – "the great art at which one was not allowed to smile".<ref>Debussy, quoted in Faris, p. 28</ref>
{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}Edit
Between 1853 and May 1855 Offenbach wrote three one-act operettas and managed to have them staged in Paris.Template:Refn They were all well received, but the authorities of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} remained unmoved. Offenbach found more encouragement from the composer, singer and impresario Florimond Ronger, known professionally as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. At his theatre, the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, opened in 1854, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} pioneered French light comic opera, or "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}".<ref name=grovlez/><ref>Huebner, Steven. "Review: Hervé: Un Musicien paradoxal (1825–1892)", Notes, Second Series, Vol. 50, No. 3 (March 1994), pp. 972–973 Template:JSTOR Template:Subscription required; Harding, pp. 59–61; and Kracauer, pp. 138–139</ref> In The Musical Quarterly, Martial Teneo and Theodore Baker wrote, "Without the example set by {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Offenbach might perhaps never have become the musician who penned {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and so many other triumphant works."<ref name=teneo>Teneo, Martial, and Theodore Baker. "Jacques Offenbach: His Centenary", The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1 (January 1920), pp. 98–117 Template:JSTOR Template:Subscription required</ref> Offenbach approached {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, who agreed to present a new one-act operetta with words by Jules Moinaux and music by Offenbach, called {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.Template:Refn It was presented on 26 June 1855 and was well received. Offenbach's biographer Peter Gammond describes it as "a charming piece of nonsense".<ref name=g36>Gammond, p. 36</ref> The piece depicts a double-bass player, played by {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, shipwrecked on a cannibal island, who after several perilous encounters with the female chief of the cannibals makes his escape using his double-bass as a boat.<ref name="Faris, p. 49"/> Offenbach pressed ahead with plans to present his works himself at his own theatre<ref name=g36/> and to abandon further thoughts of acceptance by the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref name=f28/>
Offenbach had chosen his theatre, the Salle Lacaze in the Champs-Élysées.<ref>Yon, p. 111</ref> The location and the timing were ideal for him. Paris was about to be filled between May and November with visitors from France and abroad for the 1855 Great Exhibition. The Salle Lacaze was next to the exhibition site. He later wrote:<ref>Offenbach, quoted in Gammond, p. 37 and Bekker, pp. 18–19. Various editions of Gammond give the spelling as "Lacaza" and "Lazaca". Bekker gives it as "Lacaze"</ref>
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
In the Champs-Élysées, there was a little theatre to let, built for [the magician] {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} but closed for many years. I knew that the Exhibition of 1855 would bring many people into this locality. By May, I had found twenty supporters and on 15 June I secured the lease. Twenty days later, I gathered my librettists and I opened the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
— {{#if:|, in }}Template:Comma separated entries}}
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The description of the theatre as "little" was accurate: it could hold an audience of at most 300.<ref name=grove/><ref>Yon, pp. 134–135</ref> It was therefore well suited to the tiny casts permitted under the prevailing licensing laws: Offenbach was limited to three speaking (or singing) characters in any piece.Template:Refn With such small forces, full-length works were out of the question, and Offenbach, like Hervé, presented evenings of several one-act pieces.<ref name=f49>Faris, pp. 49–51</ref> The opening of the theatre was a frantic rush, with less than a month between the issue of the licence and the opening night on 5 July 1855.<ref name=birth/> During this period Offenbach had to "equip the theatre, recruit actors, orchestra and staff, find authors to write material for the opening programme – and compose the music".<ref name=f49/> Among those he recruited at short notice was {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, the nephew of Offenbach's early mentor {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. Ludovic was a rising civil servant with a passion for the theatre and a gift for dialogue and verse. While maintaining his civil service career he went on to collaborate (sometimes under discreet pseudonyms) with Offenbach in 21 works over the next 24 years.<ref name=grove/>
{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} wrote the libretto for one of the pieces in the opening programme, but the most popular work of the evening had words by {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "The Two Blind Men", is a comedy about two beggars feigning blindness. During rehearsals there had been some concern that the public might judge it to be in poor taste,<ref>Harding, p. 66</ref> but it was not only the hit of the season in Paris: it was soon playing successfully in Vienna, London and elsewhere.<ref name="g39">Gammond, p. 39</ref> Another success in 1855 was {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (The Village Fiddler), which made a star of Hortense Schneider in her first role for Offenbach. When she auditioned for him, aged 22, he engaged her on the spot. From 1855 she was a key member of his companies through much of his career.<ref name="g39"/>
The Champs-Élysées in 1855 were not yet the grand avenue laid out by Baron Haussmann in the 1860s, but an unpaved {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref name=birth>Faris, Alexander. "The birth of the Bouffes-Parisiens", The Times, 11 October 1980, p. 6</ref> The public who were flocking to Offenbach's theatre in the summer and autumn of 1855 could not be expected to venture there in the depths of a Parisian winter. He cast about for a suitable venue and found the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, known also as the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} or {{#invoke:Lang|lang}},<ref name=grovlez/> in central Paris. He entered into partnership with its proprietor and moved the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} there for the winter season. The company returned to the Salle Lacaze for the 1856, 1857 and 1859 summer seasons, performing at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in the winter.<ref>Yon, pp. 760–762</ref> Legislation enacted in March 1861 prevented the company from using both theatres, and appearances at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} were discontinued.<ref>Levin, p. 401</ref>
{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}Edit
Offenbach's first piece for the company's new home was {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (December 1855), a well-received piece of mock-oriental frivolity, to a libretto by {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Harding, p. 253</ref> He followed it with fifteen more one-act operettas over the next three years.<ref name=grove/> They were all for the small casts permitted under his licence, although at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} he was granted an increase from three to four singers.<ref name=birth/>
Under Offenbach's management, the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} staged works by many composers. These included new pieces by Leon Gastinel and Léo Delibes. When Offenbach asked Rossini's permission to revive his comedy {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Rossini replied that he was pleased to be able to do anything for "the Mozart of the Champs-Élysées".Template:Refn Offenbach revered Mozart above all other composers. He had an ambition to present Mozart's neglected one-act comic opera {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (The Impresario) at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and he acquired the score from Vienna.<ref name=birth/> With a text translated and adapted by {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, he presented it during the Mozart centenary celebrations in May 1856 as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}; it was popular with the public<ref>Yon, p. 179</ref> and also greatly enhanced the critical and social standing of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref name="f58"/> By command of the emperor, Napoleon III, the company performed at the Tuileries Palace shortly after the first performance.<ref name=birth/>
In a long article in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in July 1856, Offenbach traced the history of comic opera. He declared that the first work worthy to be called {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} was Philidor's 1759 {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Blaise the Cobbler), and he described the gradual divergence of Italian and French notions of comic opera, with verve, imagination and gaiety from Italian composers, and mischief, common sense, good taste and wit from the French composers.Template:Refn He concluded that comic opera had become too grand and inflated. His disquisition was a preliminary to the announcement of an open competition for aspiring composers.<ref name=curtiss>Curtiss, Mina. "Bizet, Offenbach, and Rossini", The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 3 (July 1954), pp. 350–359 Template:JSTOR Template:Subscription required</ref> A jury of French composers and playwrights including {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} considered 78 entries; the five short-listed entrants were all asked to set a libretto, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, written by {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Gammond, p. 42</ref> The joint winners were Georges Bizet and Charles Lecocq. {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} became, and remained, a friend of Offenbach. {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and Offenbach took a dislike to each other, and their subsequent rivalry was not altogether friendly.<ref name=curtiss/><ref>Gammond, p. 43</ref>
Although the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} played to full houses, the theatre was constantly on the verge of running out of money, principally because of what his biographer Alexander Faris calls "Offenbach's incorrigible extravagance as a manager".<ref name=f58>Faris, p. 58</ref> An earlier biographer, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, wrote, "Jacques spent money without counting. Whole lengths of velvet were swallowed up in the auditorium; costumes devoured width after width of satin."Template:Refn Moreover, Offenbach was personally generous and liberally hospitable.<ref name=martinet/> To boost the company's finances, a London season was organised in 1857, half the company remaining in Paris to play at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and the other half performing at the St James's Theatre in the West End of London.<ref name=birth/> The visit was a success, but did not cause the sensation that Offenbach's later works did in London.<ref>Gammond, p. 46</ref>
{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}Edit
In 1858, the government lifted the licensing restrictions on the number of performers, and Offenbach was able to present more ambitious works. His first full-length operetta, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("Orpheus in the Underworld"), was presented in October 1858. Offenbach, as usual, spent freely on the production, with scenery by {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, lavish costumes, a cast of twenty principals, and a large chorus and orchestra.<ref>Harding, p. 110</ref>
As the company was particularly short of money following an abortive season in Berlin, a big success was urgently needed. At first the production seemed merely to be a modest success. It soon benefited from an outraged review by {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, the critic of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. He condemned the piece for profanity and irreverence to Roman mythology: the theme was the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, although Napoleon III and his government were generally seen as the real targets of its satire.<ref>Faris, p. 71; and Gammond, p. 54</ref> Offenbach and his librettist {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} seized on this free publicity, and joined in a lively public debate in the columns of the Parisian daily newspaper {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref name=g54>Gammond, p. 54</ref> Janin's indignation made the public agog to see the work, and the box office takings were prodigious. The piece ran for 228 performances, at a time when a run of 100 nights was considered a success.<ref>"Edmond Audran" Template:Webarchive, Opérette – Théâtre Musical, Académie Nationale de l'Opérette (in French). Retrieved 16 April 2019</ref> {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, in his history of the Bouffes-Parisiens (1860), wrote that the piece closed in June 1859 – although it was still performing strongly at the box-office – "because the actors, who could not tire the public, were themselves exhausted".<ref>Lasalle, p. 81</ref> Among those who wanted to see the satire of the emperor was the emperor himself, who commanded a performance in April 1860.<ref name=g54/> Despite many great successes during the rest of Offenbach's career, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} remained his most popular work. Gammond lists among the reasons for its success, "the sweeping waltzes" reminiscent of Vienna but with a new French flavour, the patter songs, and "above all else, of course, the can-can which had led a naughty life in low places since the 1830s or thereabouts and now became a polite fashion, as uninhibited as ever".<ref>Gammond, p. 56</ref>
In the 1859 season the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} presented new works by composers including Flotow, Jules Erlanger, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and Offenbach himself. Of Offenbach's new pieces, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, though initially only a mild success, was later revised and gained much popularity; the comedy duet of the two cowardly gendarmes became a favourite number in Britain as well as France and the basis for the Marines' Hymn in the US.<ref>Gammond, p. 57</ref><ref>"Marines' Hymn", US Library of Congress. Retrieved 26 April 2024</ref>
Early 1860sEdit
The 1860s were Offenbach's most successful decade. At the beginning of 1860, he was granted French citizenship by the personal command of Napoleon III,<ref>Kracauer, p. 209</ref> and the following year he was appointed a chevalier of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}; this appointment scandalised those members of the musical establishment who resented such an honour for a composer of popular light opera.<ref name="Faris, p. 84">Faris, p. 84</ref> Offenbach began the decade with his only substantial ballet score, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("The Butterfly"), produced at the Opéra in 1860. It achieved what was then a successful run of 42 performances, without, as the biographer Andrew Lamb says, "giving him any greater acceptance in more respectable circles".<ref name=grove/> Among other operettas in the same year, he finally had a piece presented by the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, the three-act {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. It was not a success; its plot revolved around a dog, and Offenbach attempted canine imitations in his music. Neither the public nor the critics were impressed, and the piece survived for only seven performances.<ref>Gammond, p. 63</ref>
Apart from that setback, Offenbach flourished in the 1860s, the successes greatly outnumbering the failures. In 1861 he led the company in a summer season in Vienna. Encountering packed houses and enthusiastic reviews, Offenbach found Vienna much to his liking. He even reverted, for a single evening, to his old role as a cello virtuoso at a command performance before Emperor Franz Joseph.<ref name=g70>Gammond, p. 70</ref> That success was followed by a failure in Berlin. Offenbach, though born a Prussian citizen, observed, "Prussia never does anything to make those of our nationality happy."Template:Refn He and the company hastened back to Paris.<ref name=g70/> Meanwhile, among his operettas that season were the full-length {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and the one-act {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Gänzl, Kurt. "Jacques Offenbach" Template:Webarchive. Operetta Research Center, 27 February 2010. Retrieved 25 July 2011</ref>Template:Refn
In 1862, Offenbach's only son, Auguste (died 1883), was born, the last of five children. In the same year, Offenbach resigned as director of the Bouffes-Parisiens, handing the post over to Alphonse Varney. He continued to write most of his works for the company, with occasional pieces first given at the summer season at Bad Ems.Template:Refn Despite problems with the libretto, Offenbach completed a serious opera in 1864, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a hotchpotch of romantic and mythological themes.<ref>Gammond, pp. 77–78</ref> The opera was presented with substantial cuts at the Vienna Court Opera and in Cologne in 1865. It was not given again until 2002, when it was finally performed in its entirety. Since then it has been given several productions.<ref>OEK Dokumentation 2002–2006, Jacques Offenbach, Les Fées du Rhin Template:Webarchive, Boosey & Hawkes, Bote Bock (in German), 2006, p. 59</ref> It contained one number, the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, described by the critic Eduard Hanslick as "lovely, luring and sensuous",<ref>Gammond, p. 78</ref> which Ernest Guiraud later adapted as the Barcarolle in The Tales of Hoffmann.<ref>Faris, p. 24</ref> After December 1864, Offenbach wrote less frequently for the Bouffes-Parisiens, and many of his new works premiered at larger theatres.<ref name=grove/>
Later 1860sEdit
Between 1864 and 1868 Offenbach wrote four of the operettas for which he is chiefly remembered: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1864), {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1866), {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1867) and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1868). Halévy was joined as librettist for all of them by Henri Meilhac. Offenbach, who called them "Meil" and "Hal",<ref>Faris, p. 51</ref> said of this trinity: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Dufreigne, p. 302</ref> a play on words loosely translated as "I am certainly the Father, but each of them is my Son and Wholly Spirited".Template:Refn
For {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Offenbach secured Hortense Schneider to play the title role. Since her early success in his short operas, she had become a leading star of the French musical stage. She now commanded large fees and was notoriously temperamental, but Offenbach was adamant that no other singer could match her as Hélène.<ref name=g80/> Rehearsals for the premiere at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} were tempestuous, with Schneider and the principal mezzo-soprano Léa Silly feuding, the censor fretting about the satire of the imperial court, and the manager of the theatre attempting to rein in Offenbach's extravagance with production expenses.<ref name=g80>Gammond, p. 80</ref> Once again the success of the piece was inadvertently assured by the critic Janin; his scandalised notice was strongly countered by liberal critics and the ensuing publicity again brought the public flocking.<ref>Gammond, p. 81</ref>
{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} was a success in early 1866 and was quickly reproduced elsewhere. {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} later in the same year was a new departure for Offenbach and his librettists; for the first time in a large-scale piece they chose a modern setting, instead of disguising their satire under a classical cloak. It needed no inadvertent boost from Janin but was an instant and prolonged success with Parisian audiences, although its very Parisian themes made it less popular abroad. Gammond describes the libretto as "almost worthy of [W. S.] Gilbert", and Offenbach's score as "certainly his best so far".<ref>Gammond, p. 87</ref> The piece starred Zulma Bouffar, who began an affair with the composer that lasted until at least 1875.<ref>Harding, p. 141</ref>
In 1867 Offenbach had one of his greatest successes. The premiere of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a satire on militarism,<ref>Gammond, p. 89</ref> took place two days after the opening of the Paris Exhibition, an even greater international draw than the 1855 exhibition which had helped him launch his composing career.<ref>Harding, pp. 165–168</ref> The Parisian public and foreign visitors flocked to the new operetta. Sovereigns who saw the piece included King William of Prussia accompanied by his chief minister, Otto von Bismarck. Halévy, with his experience as a senior civil servant, saw the looming threat from Prussia; he wrote in his diary, "Bismarck is helping to double our takings. This time it's war we're laughing at, and war is at our gates."<ref>Harding, p. 172</ref> La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein was followed by a quick succession of modest successes. In 1867 he produced Robinson Crusoé and a revised version of Geneviève de Brabant; in 1868, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and a revised version of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Template:Cite Grove Template:Subscription required (Le Pont de soupirs); and Gammond, pp. 93–94 (Robinson Crusoé, Geneviève de Brabant, Le château à Toto and L'île de Tulipatan)</ref>
In October 1868 La Périchole marked a transition in Offenbach's style, with less exuberant satire and more human romantic interest.<ref name=g97>Gammond, p. 97</ref> Lamb calls it Offenbach's "most charming" score.<ref name=LambPerichole>Template:Cite Grove Template:Subscription required</ref> There was some critical grumbling at the change, but the piece, with Schneider in the lead, made a good profit.<ref>Yon, p. 374</ref> It was quickly produced elsewhere in Europe and both North and South America.<ref>"La Périchole", Template:Ill, No. 66, August 1984</ref><ref>Gänzl and Lamb, p. 306</ref> Of the pieces that followed it at the end of the decade, Les brigands (1869) was another work that leaned more to romantic comic opera than to the more ebullient opéra bouffe. It was well received, but has been less often revived than Offenbach's best-known operettas.<ref name=g97/>
War and aftermathEdit
Offenbach returned hurriedly from a trip to Ems and Wiesbaden just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He then went to his home in Étretat in Normandy and arranged for his family to move to the safety of San Sebastián in northern Spain, joining them shortly afterwards.<ref>Yon, p. 396</ref><ref>Faris, p. 164</ref> Having risen to fame under Napoleon III, satirised him, and been rewarded by him, Offenbach was universally associated with the old régime: he was known as "the mocking-bird of the Second Empire".<ref>Canning, Hugh. "I love Paris", The Sunday Times, 5 November 2000, p. 10</ref> When the empire fell in the wake of Prussia's crushing victory at Sedan in September 1870, Offenbach's music was suddenly out of favour. France was swept by violently anti-German sentiments, and despite his French citizenship and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, his birth and upbringing in Cologne made him suspect. His operettas were now frequently vilified as the embodiment of everything superficial and worthless in Napoleon III's régime.<ref name=ashley/> {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} was banned in France because of its antimilitarist satire.<ref>Clements, Andrew. "Offenbach: La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein", Template:Webarchive, The Guardian, 14 October 2005</ref>
Although his Parisian audience deserted him, Offenbach had by now become highly popular in London's West End. John Hollingshead of the Gaiety Theatre presented Offenbach's operettas to large and enthusiastic audiences.<ref>Gammond, p. 100</ref> Between 1870 and 1872, the Gaiety produced fifteen of his works. At the Royalty Theatre, Richard D'Oyly Carte presented {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in 1875.<ref>Young, pp. 105–106</ref> In Vienna, too, Offenbach works were regularly produced. While the war and its aftermath ravaged Paris, the composer supervised Viennese productions and travelled to England as the guest of the Prince of Wales.<ref>Gammond, p. 102</ref>
By the end of 1871 life in Paris had returned to normal, and Offenbach ended his voluntary exile. His new works {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1872) and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1873) were modestly profitable, but lavish revivals of his earlier successes did better at the box office. He decided to go back into theatre management and took over the Théâtre de la Gaîté in July 1873.<ref>Gammond, p. 104</ref> His spectacular revival of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} there was highly profitable; an attempt to repeat that success with a new, lavish version of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} proved less popular.<ref>Harding, p. 198</ref> Along with the costs of extravagant productions, collaboration with the dramatist Victorien Sardou culminated in financial disaster. An expensive production of Sardou's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in 1874, with incidental music by Offenbach, failed to attract the public to the Gaîté, and Offenbach was forced to sell his interests in the Gaîté and to mortgage future royalties.<ref>Harding, pp. 199–200, and Yon, p. 502</ref>
In 1876 a successful tour of the US in connection with its Centennial Exhibition enabled Offenbach to recover some of his losses and pay his debts. Beginning with a concert at Gilmore's Garden before a crowd of 8,000 people, he gave a series of more than 40 concerts in New York and Philadelphia. To circumvent a Philadelphia law forbidding entertainments on Sundays, he disguised his operetta numbers as liturgical pieces and advertised a "Grand Sacred Concert by M. Offenbach". "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" from {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} became a "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}", and other equally secular numbers were billed as "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" or "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}".<ref>O'Connor, Patrick. "The Embodiment of Success", The Times Literary Supplement, 10 October 1980, p. 1128</ref> The local authorities were not deceived,<ref>Gammond, p. 116</ref> and withdrew authorisation for the concert at the last minute.<ref>"Offenbach in America", The Musical Times, 1 April 1877, p. 168 {{#invoke:doi|main}} Template:Subscription required</ref> At Booth's Theatre, New York, Offenbach conducted {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>"Amusements – The Opera Bouffe", Template:Webarchive, The New York Times, 13 June 1876</ref> and his recent (1873) {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref name=grove/> He returned to France in July 1876, with profits that were handsome but not spectacular.<ref name=teneo/>
Offenbach's later operettas enjoyed renewed popularity in France, especially {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1878), which featured a fantasy plot about the real-life French actress Marie Justine Favart, and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1879), which was the most successful of his operettas of the 1870s.<ref name=axxi/>
Last yearsEdit
Profitable though {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} was, composing it left Offenbach less time to work on his cherished project, the creation of a successful serious opera. Since the beginning of 1877, he had been working when he could on a piece based on a stage play, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. Offenbach had suffered from gout since the 1860s, often being carried into the theatre in a chair. Now in failing health, he was conscious of his own mortality and wished passionately to live long enough to complete the opera, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("The Tales of Hoffmann"). He was heard saying to Kleinzach, his dog, "I would give everything I have to be at the première".<ref>Faris, p. 192</ref> Offenbach did not live to finish the piece. He left the vocal score substantially complete and had made a start on the orchestration. Ernest Guiraud, a family friend, assisted by Offenbach's 18-year-old son Auguste, completed the orchestration, making major changes as well as the substantial cuts demanded by the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}'s director, Carvalho.<ref name="KeckASO">Keck, Jean-Christophe. "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}", {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Éditions Premières Loges, Paris, No 235, 2006.</ref>Template:Refn The opera was first seen at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} on 10 February 1881.<ref name="KeckASO"/> Offenbach also left his last comedy, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, unfinished; Léo Delibes orchestrated it and it was given at the Théâtre de la Renaissance on 30 October 1880.<ref>Yon, p. 616</ref>
Offenbach died in Paris on 5 October 1880 at the age of 61. His cause of death was certified as heart failure brought on by acute gout. He was given a state funeral; The Times reported, "The crowd of distinguished men that accompanied him on his last journey amid the general sympathy of the public shows that the late composer was reckoned among the masters of his art."<ref>"France", The Times, 8 October 1880, p. 3</ref> He is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery.<ref>Harding, p. 249; and "Cimetière de Montmartre" Template:Webarchive, Parisinfo, Site officiel de l'Office du Tourisme et des Congrès. Retrieved 23 June 2013</ref>
WorksEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} In The Musical Times, Mark Lubbock wrote in 1957:<ref name=lubbock/>
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Offenbach's music is as individually characteristic as that of Delius, Grieg or Puccini – together with range and variety. He could write straightforward "singing" numbers like Paris's song in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} [Three goddessess on Mount Ida]; comic songs like General Boum's "Piff Paff Pouf" and the ridiculous ensemble at the servants' ball in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ["Your coat has split down the back"]. He was a specialist at writing music that had a rapturous, hysterical quality. The famous can-can from {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} has it, and so has the finale of the servants' party ... which ends with the delirious song {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. Then, as a contrast, he could compose songs of a simplicity, grace and beauty like the Letter Song from {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "Chanson de Fortunio", and the Grand Duchess's tender love song to Fritz: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
— {{#if:|, in }}Template:Comma separated entries}}
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Among other well-known Offenbach numbers are {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (the Doll Song from The Tales of Hoffmann); {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}); and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, which Lamb notes was Offenbach's last major song for Hortense Schneider.<ref name=LambPerichole />Template:Refn
OperettasEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} By his own reckoning, Offenbach composed more than 100 operas.<ref>"Offenbach's hundred operas", The Era, 11 February 1877, p. 5</ref>Template:Refn Both the number and the noun are open to question: some works were so extensively revised that he evidently counted the revised versions as new, and commentators generally refer to all but a few of his stage works as operettas, rather than operas. Offenbach reserved the term {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (English: operetta)Template:Refn or {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} for some of his one-act works, more often using the term {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} for his full-length ones (though there are several one- and two-act examples of this type). It was only with the further development of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} genre in Vienna after 1870 that the French term {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} began to be used for works longer than one act.<ref>Template:Cite Grove Template:Subscription required</ref> Offenbach also used the term {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} for at least 24 of his works in either one, two or three acts.<ref>Gammond, pp. 145–156</ref>Template:Refn
Offenbach's earliest operettas were one-act pieces for small casts. More than 30 of these were presented before his first full-scale "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}", {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, in 1858, and he composed over twenty more of them during the rest of his career.<ref name=grove/><ref>Gammond, pp. 156–157</ref> Lamb, following the precedent of Henseler's 1930 study of the composer, divides the one-act pieces into five categories: (i) country idylls; (ii) urban operettas; (iii) military operettas; (iv) farces; and (v) burlesques or parodies.<ref name=l80>Lamb, Andrew. "Offenbach in One Act", The Musical Times, Vol. 121, No. 1652 (October 1980), pp. 615–617 Template:JSTOR Template:Subscription required</ref> Offenbach enjoyed his greatest success in the 1860s. His most popular operettas from that decade have remained among his best known.<ref name=grove/>
Texts and word settingEdit
The first ideas for plots usually came from Offenbach, his librettists working along lines agreed with him. Lamb writes, "In this respect Offenbach was both well served and skilful at discovering talent. Like Sullivan, and unlike Johann Strauss II, he was consistently blessed with workable subjects and genuinely witty librettos."<ref name=grove/> In his setting of his librettists' words he took advantage of the rhythmic flexibility of the French language, and sometimes took this to extremes, forcing words into unnatural stresses.<ref>Hughes, p. 43</ref> Harding comments that he "wrought much violence on the French language".<ref name="Harding, p. 208"/> A frequent characteristic of Offenbach's word setting was the nonsensical repetition of isolated syllables of words for comic effect; an example is the quintet for the kings in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}Template:Refn
Musical structureEdit
In general, Offenbach followed simple, established forms. His melodies are usually short and unvaried in their basic rhythm, rarely, in Hughes's words, escaping "the despotism of the four-bar phrase".<ref>Hughes, p. 46</ref> In modulation Offenbach was similarly cautious; he rarely switched a melody to a remote or unexpected key, and kept mostly to a tonic–dominant–subdominant pattern.<ref name=h48>Hughes, p. 48</ref> Within these conventional limits, he employed greater resource in his varied use of rhythm; in a single number he would contrast rapid patter for one singer with a broad, smooth phrase for another, illustrating their different characters.<ref name=h48/> He often switched quickly between major and minor keys, effectively contrasting characters or situations.<ref>Hughes, p. 51</ref> When he wished to, Offenbach could use unconventional techniques, such as the leitmotif, used throughout to accompany the eponymous Docteur Ox (1877)<ref>Hughes, p. 39</ref> and to parody Wagner in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1860).<ref>Gammond, p. 59</ref>
OrchestrationEdit
In his early pieces for the Bouffes-Parisiens, the size of the orchestra pit had restricted Offenbach to an orchestra of sixteen players.<ref>Faris, p. 39</ref> He composed for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, piston, trombone, percussion (including timpani) and a small string section of seven players.<ref name=keck/> After moving to the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} he had an orchestra of 30 players.<ref name=keck/> The musicologist and Offenbach specialist Jean-Christophe Keck notes that when larger orchestras were available, either in bigger Paris theatres or in Vienna or elsewhere, Offenbach would compose, or rearrange existing music, accordingly. Surviving scores show his instrumentation for additional wind and brass, and even extra percussion. When they were available he wrote for cor anglais, harp, and – exceptionally, Keck records – an ophicleide (Le Papillon), tubular bells (Le carnaval des revues), and a wind machine (Le voyage dans la lune).<ref name=keck/>
Hughes describes Offenbach's orchestration as "always skilful, often delicate, and occasionally subtle". He instances Pluton's song in Orphée aux enfers,Template:Refn introduced by a three-bar phrase for solo clarinet and solo bassoon in octaves immediately repeated on solo flute and solo bassoon an octave higher.<ref>Hughes, p. 45</ref> In Keck's view, "Offenbach's orchestral scoring is full of details, elaborate counter-voices, minute interactions coloured by interjections of the woodwinds or brass, all of which establish a dialogue with the voices. His refinement of design equals that of Mozart or Rossini."<ref name=keck>Keck, Jean-Christophe. "The need for an authentic Offenbach" Template:Webarchive, Offenbach Edition, Keck, Boosey & Hawkes. Retrieved 16 July 2011</ref>
Compositional methodEdit
According to Keck, Offenbach would first make a note of melodies a libretto suggested to him in a notebook or straight onto the librettist's manuscript. Next using full score manuscript paper he wrote down vocal parts in the centre, then a piano accompaniment at the bottom possibly with notes on orchestration. When Offenbach felt sure the work would be performed, he began full orchestration, often employing a sort of shorthand.<ref>Keck, Jean-Christophe (2006) "Offenbach, an oeuvre boasting more than 600 works". Notes to Universal Classics CD 476 8999 2006 Template:Oclc</ref>
Parody and influencesEdit
Offenbach was well known for parodying other composers' music. Some of them saw the joke and others did not. Adam, Auber and Meyerbeer enjoyed Offenbach's parodies of their scores.<ref name=teneo/> Meyerbeer made a point of attending all Bouffes-Parisiens productions, always seated in Offenbach's private box.<ref name=birth/> Among the composers who were not amused by Offenbach's parodies were Berlioz and Wagner.<ref name=berlioz>Gammond, pp. 59, 63 and 73</ref> Offenbach mocked Berlioz's "strivings after the antique",<ref>Henseler, quoted in Hughes, p. 46</ref> and his initial light-hearted satire of Wagner's pretensions later hardened into genuine dislike.<ref>Gammond, pp. 59 and 127</ref> Berlioz reacted by bracketing Offenbach and Wagner together as "the product of the mad German mind", and Wagner, ignoring Berlioz, retaliated by writing some unflattering verses about Offenbach.<ref name=berlioz/>
In general, Offenbach's parodistic technique was simply to play the original music in unexpected and incongruous circumstances. He slipped the banned revolutionary anthem La Marseillaise into the chorus of rebellious gods in Orphée aux enfers, and quoted the aria {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} from Gluck's Orfeo in the same work; in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} he quoted the patriotic trio from Rossini's William Tell and parodied himself in the ensemble for the kings of Greece, in which the accompaniment quotes the rondeau from {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. In his one act pieces, Offenbach parodied Rossini's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and familiar arias by Bellini. In Croquefer (1857), one duet consists of quotations from Halévy's La Juive and Meyerbeer's Robert le diable and Les Huguenots.<ref name=l80/><ref>Scherer, Barrymore Laurence. "Gilbert & Sullivan, Parody's Patresfamilias", Template:Webarchive, The Wall Street Journal, 23 June 2011</ref> Even in his later, less satirical period, he included a parodic quotation from Donizetti's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref name=grove/>
Other examples of Offenbach's use of incongruity are noted by the critic Paul Taylor: "In {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, the kings of Greece denounce Paris as 'un vil séducteur' [vile seducer] to a waltz tempo that is itself unsuitably seductive ... the potty-sounding phrase {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} becomes the absurd nucleus of a big cod-ensemble."<ref>Taylor, Paul. "The judgement of Paris, France", Template:Webarchive, The Independent, 28 November 1995</ref> Another lyric set to absurdly ceremonious music is {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (your coat has split down the back) in La vie parisienne.<ref name=grovlez/> The Grand Duchess of Gérolstein's rondo {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} is rhythmically and melodically similar to the finale of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, but it is not clear whether the similarity is parodic or coincidental.<ref name=grovlez/>
In Offenbach's last decade, he took note of a change in public taste: a simpler, more romantic style was now preferred. Harding writes that Lecocq had successfully moved away from satire and parody, returning to "the genuine spirit of opéra-comique and its peculiarly French gaiety".<ref name="Harding, p. 208">Harding, p. 208</ref> Offenbach followed suit in a series of twenty operettas; the conductor and musicologist Antonio de Almeida names the finest of these as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1879).<ref name=axxi>Almeida, p. xxi</ref>
Other worksEdit
Of Offenbach's two serious operas, Die Rheinnixen, a failure, was not revived until the 21st century.<ref>Milnes, Rodney. "One Long Hymn to Pacifism", Opera, October 2009, pp. 1202–1206.</ref> His second attempt, The Tales of Hoffmann, was originally intended as a grand opera.<ref>Faris, pp. 203–204</ref> When the work was accepted by {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} for production at the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Offenbach agreed to make it an {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} with spoken dialogue. It was incomplete when he died;<ref>Traubner (2001), p. 643; Faris, p. 190; Gammond, pp. 127–128.</ref> Faris speculates that, but for Georges Bizet's premature death, Bizet rather than Guiraud would have been asked to complete the piece and would have done so more satisfactorily.<ref>Faris, p. 195</ref> The critic Tim Ashley writes, "Stylistically, the opera reveals a remarkable amalgam of French and German influences ... Weberian chorales preface Hoffmann's narrative. Olympia delivers a big coloratura aria straight out of French grand opera, while Antonia sings herself to death to music reminiscent of Schubert."<ref name=ashley>Ashley, Tim. "The cursed opera", The Guardian, 9 January 2004</ref>
Although he wrote ballet music for dance sequences in many of his operettas, Offenbach wrote only one full-length ballet, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. The score was much praised for its orchestration, and it contained one number, the "Valse des rayons", that became an international success.<ref>Gammond, p. 62</ref> Between 1836 and 1875 he composed several individual waltzes and polkas, and suites of dances.<ref>Gammond, p. 159</ref> They include a waltz, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("Evening Papers") composed for Vienna with Johann Strauss's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("Morning Papers") as a companion piece.<ref>Gammond, pp. 75–76</ref> Other orchestral compositions include a piece in 17th-century style with cello solo, which became a standard work of the cello repertoire. Little of Offenbach's non-operatic orchestral music has been regularly performed since his death.<ref name=g28/>
Offenbach composed more than 50 non-operatic songs between 1838 and 1854, most of them to French texts, by authors including Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier and Jean de La Fontaine, and also ten to German texts. Among the most popular of these songs are "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" (1843), dedicated to the young Hérminie d'Alcain as an early token of the composer's love.<ref>Gammond, p. 26</ref> An Ave Maria for soprano solo was rediscovered at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 2000.<ref>"Ave Maria solo de Soprano", Bibliothèque nationale de France. Retrieved 7 April 2024</ref>
Arrangements and editionsEdit
Although the overtures to {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} are well known and frequently recorded, the scores usually performed and recorded are not by Offenbach, but were arranged from music in the operas by Carl Binder and Eduard Haensch, respectively, for the Vienna premieres of the two works.<ref>Yon, p. 669 and Hall, George (1994). Notes to Decca CD 425–083–2 Template:Oclc</ref> Offenbach's own preludes are much shorter.<ref>Gammond, p. 69</ref>
In 1938, Manuel Rosenthal assembled the popular ballet {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} from his own orchestral arrangements of melodies from Offenbach's stage works, and in 1953 the same composer assembled a symphonic suite, Offenbachiana, also from music by Offenbach.<ref>Salter, Lionel. "Offenbach/Rosenthal – Gaîté Parisienne. Offenbachiana", Gramophone, November 1999, p. 72</ref> Jean-Christophe Keck regards the 1938 work as "no more than a vulgarly orchestrated pastiche".<ref>Keck, Jean-Christophe. "Offenbach Edition Keck" Template:Webarchive, Offenbach Edition Keck, Boosey & Hawkes. Retrieved 16 July 2011</ref> In Gammond's view it does "full justice" to Offenbach.<ref>Gammond, p. 135</ref>
Efforts to present critical editions of Offenbach's works have been hampered by the dispersion of his autograph scores to several collections after his death, some of which do not grant access to scholars. Although Auguste catalogued the sketches and manuscripts after his father's death, when the composer's widow died the surviving daughters battled over the papers.<ref>"Der Krimi geht weiter" Template:Webarchive, Opernwelt, May 2012, p. 68, cited in full on Operetta Research Center Template:Webarchive ("Boris Kehrmann. Gehört Offenbach nicht allen? Auch Jean-Christophe Kecks Offenbach-Edition lässt Fragen offen". 30 January 2013). Retrieved 25 May 2014.</ref> Many of his papers may have been lost in the collapse of the city archives in Cologne in 2009.<ref>"Collapsed Cologne Archives Show Challenge of Preserving History" Template:Webarchive, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 25 May 2014.</ref>
Legacy and reputationEdit
InfluenceEdit
Offenbach had a considerable influence on some later French composers, although his immediate successor, Lecocq, strove to distance himself and went out of his way to avoid rhythmic devices familiar from Offenbach's works.<ref>Traubner (1984), p. 71</ref> Francis Poulenc in his biography of Emmanuel Chabrier wrote that as a great admirer of Offenbach, Chabrier took to imitating him explicitly in some details: "Hence {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) is directly derived from {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}".<ref name=p30>Poulenc, p. 30</ref> Poulenc traces the influence through Chabrier and André Messager to his own music.<ref name=p30/> The composer and musicologist Wilfrid Mellers finds music modelled on Offenbach's in Poulenc's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Mellers, pp. 100–101</ref>
The musician and author Fritz Spiegl wrote in 1980, "Without Offenbach there would have been no Savoy Opera ... no {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} or Merry Widow".<ref>Spiegl, Fritz. "Less than serious", The Times Literary Supplement, 10 October 1980, p. 1128</ref> The two creators of the Savoy operas – the librettist, Gilbert, and the composer, Sullivan – were both indebted to Offenbach and his partners for their satiric and musical styles, even borrowing plot components.<ref>Gammond, pp. 87 and 138</ref> For example, Faris argues that the mock-oriental Ba-ta-clan influenced The Mikado, including its character names, Offenbach's Ko-ko-ri-ko and Gilbert's Ko-Ko.<ref>Faris, p. 53</ref>Template:Refn The best-known instance in which a Savoy opera draws on Offenbach's work is The Pirates of Penzance (1879), where both Gilbert and Sullivan follow the lead of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1869) in their treatment of the police, who plod along ineffectually in heavy march-time.<ref name=g97/> {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} was presented in London in 1871, 1873 and 1875;<ref name=g97/> before the first of these, Gilbert made an English translation of Meilhac and Halévy's libretto.<ref name=mp/>Template:Refn
However much the young Sullivan was influenced by Offenbach,Template:Refn the influence was evidently not in only one direction. Hughes observes that two numbers in Offenbach's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1878) bear "an astonishing resemblance" to "My name is John Wellington Wells" from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer (1877).<ref>Hughes, p. 40</ref>
Offenbach's popularity with Viennese audiences led composers there to follow his lead. He encouraged Johann Strauss to turn to operetta when they met in Vienna in 1864, but it was not until seven years later that Strauss did so.<ref name=g75/> In his first successful operetta, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1874), and its successors, Strauss worked on the lines developed by his Parisian colleague. The libretto for {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} was adapted from a play by Meilhac and Halévy,<ref>Template:Cite Grove Template:Subscription required</ref> and the operetta specialist Richard Traubner comments that Strauss was influenced by "the two brilliant party scenes" in Offenbach's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Traubner (2001), p. 641</ref> A leading Viennese critic demanded that composers "remain within the realm of pure operetta, a rule strictly observed by Offenbach",<ref name=g75>Gammond, pp. 75–77</ref> and among Strauss's later stage works was Prinz Methusalem (1877), described by Lamb as "a satirical Offenbachian piece".<ref>Template:Cite Grove Template:Subscription required</ref>
In Gammond's view, the Viennese composer most influenced by Offenbach was Franz von Suppé, who studied Offenbach's works carefully and wrote many successful operettas using them as a model.<ref>Gammond, p. 77</ref> Traubner writes that Suppé's early works frankly imitated Offenbach's, and his operas – and Strauss's – were "unmistakably Parisian (as much derived from Meilhac and Halévy as from Offenbach)".<ref>Traubner (1984), p. 103</ref> Suppé's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (The Boarding School, 1860) not only emulates Offenbach, but refers to him in the first act, when the heroine, the schoolgirl Sophie, and her friends learn about the can-can and proceed to dance it. <ref>Selenick, p. 87</ref> Suppé's most enduring one-act success, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (The Beautiful Galatea, 1865),<ref name=t106>Traubner (1984), p. 106</ref> was modelled, in both title and style, on Offenbach's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} which had been a great success in Vienna earlier that year.<ref name=t106/>
In the Cambridge Opera Journal in 2014 the musicologist Micaela Baranello writes that Franz Lehár's operettas have a strong Offenbachian element, alongside what she calls a "folksy, imaginary" {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} one. She cites eight numbers in The Merry Widow as in the Parisian tradition, including "the percussive nonsense syllables familiar from Offenbach".<ref>Baranello, pp. 175, 190 and 194</ref> Elsewhere in Europe, Offenbach was an important influence on the development of zarzuela in Spain,<ref>San Martin, p. 338</ref> and the 20th-century German composer Kurt Weill described his own {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Cattle Trading) as "an operetta influenced by Offenbach".<ref>Filler, p. 503</ref>
In his 1957 article, Lubbock wrote, "Offenbach is undoubtedly the most significant figure in the history of the 'musical'", and traced the development of musical theatre from Offenbach via Sullivan, Lehár, Messager and Lionel Monckton to Irving Berlin and Rodgers and Hammerstein.<ref name=lubbock>Lubbock, Mark. "The Music of 'Musicals'", The Musical Times, Vol. 98, No. 1375 (September 1957), pp. 483–485 Template:JSTOR Template:Subscription required</ref> Lamb writes, "During the nineteenth century the works of Offenbach, Johann Strauss, and Gilbert and Sullivan had scarcely less success in the New World than in the Old",<ref>Lamb, p. 133</ref> and according to the historian Adrian Wright the 1858 New York premiere of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} made Offenbach "a Broadway constant", putting his works in vogue in America until the end of the century.<ref>Wright, p. 5</ref> He influenced some American composers such as John Philip Sousa in his operetta El Capitan (1896).<ref>Lamb, p. 138</ref> Sousa's contemporary, David Braham, was dubbed "the American Offenbach", and included phrases from Offenbach's scores in his own music.<ref>Franceschina, pp. 2–3</ref> Later, Lamb finds echoes of La Vie parisienne in Cole Porter's Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), although the influence in that case is more that of Meilhac and Halévy than of Offenbach.<ref>Lamb, p. 181</ref> In a 2005 study of Lerner and Loewe, Gene Lees writes, "The wellspring of the American musical is to be found in the opéra-bouffe of Jacques Offenbach", and Alan Jay Lerner said that Offenbach "was indeed the father of us all".<ref>Lees, p. 12</ref>
ReputationEdit
During Offenbach's lifetime, and in the obituary notices in 1880, fastidious critics (dubbed "Musical Snobs Ltd" by Gammond) showed themselves at odds with public appreciation.<ref>Gammond, p. 137</ref> In a 1980 article in The Musical Times, George Hauger commented that those critics not only underrated Offenbach, but wrongly supposed that his music would soon be forgotten.<ref>Hauger, George. "Offenbach: English Obituaries and Realities", The Musical Times, Vol. 121, No. 1652 (October 1980), pp. 619–621 Template:JSTOR Template:Subscription required</ref> Although most critics of the time made that erroneous assumption, a few perceived Offenbach's unusual quality; in The Times, Francis Hueffer wrote, "none of his numerous Parisian imitators has ever been able to rival Offenbach at his best".<ref name=times>Obituary, The Times, 6 October 1880, p. 3</ref> Nevertheless, the paper joined in the general prediction: "It is very doubtful whether any of his works will survive."<ref name=times/> The New York Times shared this view: "That he had the gift of melody in a very extraordinary degree is not to be denied, but he wrote {{#invoke:Lang|lang}},Template:Refn and the lack of development of his choicest inspirations will, it is to be feared, keep them from reaching even the next generation".<ref>"Jacques Offenbach dead – The end of the great composer of opera bouffe", Template:Webarchive, The New York Times, 6 October 1880</ref> After the posthumous production of The Tales of Hoffmann, The Times partially reconsidered its judgment, writing, "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} [will] confirm the opinion of those who regard him as a great composer in every sense of the word". It then lapsed into what Gammond calls "Victorian sanctimoniousness"<ref>Gammond, p. 138</ref> by taking it for granted that the opera "will uphold Offenbach's fame long after his lighter compositions have passed out of memory".<ref>"France", The Times, 14 February 1881, p. 5</ref>
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called Offenbach both an "artistic genius" and a "clown", but wrote that "nearly every one" of Offenbach's works achieves half a dozen "moments of wanton perfection". The novelist Émile Zola commented on Offenbach in an essay, "La féerie et l'opérette IV/V".<ref name=Zola>Zola, Émile: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Webarchive, 1881 (e-book in French). Retrieved 31 July 2011</ref> While granting that Offenbach's best operettas are full of grace, charm and wit, Zola blames him for what others have made of the genre. Zola calls operetta a "public enemy" and a "monstrous beast". Some critics saw the satire in Offenbach's works as a social protest, an attack against the establishment, but Zola saw the works as a homage to the social system in the Second Empire.<ref name=Zola/>
The mid-20th-century critic Sacheverell Sitwell compared Offenbach's lyrical and comic gifts to those of Mozart and Rossini.<ref>Ardoin, John. The Tales of Offenbach Template:Webarchive. San Francisco Opera, 1996. Retrieved 31 July 2011</ref> Otto Klemperer, although best known as a conductor of the German symphonic classics,<ref>"As though Beethoven himself were standing there", Saturday Review, 14 October 1961, p. 89</ref> was an admirer of Offenbach; late in life he reflected: "At the Kroll [in 1931] we did {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. That's a really delightful score. So is Orpheus in the Underworld and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. Those who called him 'The Mozart of the Boulevards' were not much mistaken".<ref>"Otto Klemperer talks to Alan Blyth", Gramophone, May 1970, pp. 1748 and 1751</ref> Debussy, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov loved Offenbach's operettas.<ref>Almeida, pp. xii and xvii</ref> Debussy rated them higher than The Tales of Hoffmann: "The one work in which [Offenbach] tried to be serious met with no success." He wrote this in 1903, when The Tales of Hoffmann, after initial success, with 101 performances in its first year, had become neglected.<ref>Faris, p. 219</ref> A production by Thomas Beecham at His Majesty's Theatre, London, in 1910 restored the work to the mainstream operatic repertoire, where it has remained.<ref>"His Majesty's Theatre – Thomas Beecham Opera Season", The Times, 13 May 1910, p. 10</ref><ref>Faris, p. 221</ref> A London critic wrote, on Offenbach's death, "I somewhere read that some of Offenbach's latest work shows him to be capable of more ambitious work. I, for one, am glad he did what he did, and only wish he had done more of the same kind."<ref>"The Only Jones", Judy, 13 October 1880, p. 172</ref> In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Lamb writes:<ref name=grove/>
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His opera {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} has retained a place in the international repertory, but his most significant achievements lie in the field of operetta. {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} remain outstanding examples of the French and international operetta repertory.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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Notes and referencesEdit
NotesEdit
ReferencesEdit
SourcesEdit
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External linksEdit
- Offenbach Edition Keck
- "Jacques Offenbach", Boosey & Hawkes
- List of works by Offenbach at the Index to Opera and Ballet Sources Online
- {{#if: 7941 {{#property:P1220}}
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