Jacques Offenbach ( / ˈ ɒ f ən b ɑː x / ; 20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) was a composer, cellist, and theater manager born in Germany but later lived in France. He is best known for writing nearly 100 operettas between the 1850s and 1870s, as well as an unfinished opera called The Tales of Hoffmann. His work influenced many later composers, including Franz von Suppé, Johann Strauss II, and Arthur Sullivan. Many of his operettas were performed throughout the 20th century and continue to be performed today. The Tales of Hoffmann is still part of the standard opera collection.
Offenbach was born in Cologne, which was part of the Kingdom of Prussia. His father was a synagogue singer, and Offenbach showed musical talent from a young age. At 14, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire but left after one year, choosing to stay in Paris instead. From 1835 to 1855, he earned a living by playing the cello and conducting music. He wanted to write funny musical plays for the theater. When the management of Paris’s Opéra-Comique refused to perform his works, he rented a small theater in the Champs-Élysées in 1855. Over the next three years, he performed more than 20 short musical pieces, many of which became popular.
In 1858, Offenbach created his first full-length operetta, Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld), which included a famous dance called the can-can. The piece was very successful and remains his most performed work. During the 1860s, he wrote at least 18 full-length operettas and many shorter ones. Some of his well-known works from this time include La belle Hélène (1864), La Vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), and La Périchole (1868). These operettas often included humorous stories about love and relationships, along with easy-to-remember melodies. They became popular in cities like Vienna, London, and New York.
Offenbach was connected to the Second French Empire ruled by Napoleon III. His operettas often gently mocked the emperor and his court. Napoleon gave Offenbach French citizenship and a French honor called the Légion d'honneur. However, after the Franco-Prussian War began in 1870 and the French Empire fell, Offenbach was unpopular in Paris because of his ties to the emperor and his German birth. He remained successful in Vienna, London, and New York. He returned to Paris in the 1870s, reviving some of his older works and creating new ones. He also toured the United States. In his final years, he tried to finish The Tales of Hoffmann but died before the opera was performed. Later musicians completed or edited the work, and it is now part of the standard opera collection.
Life and career
Jacques Offenbach was born on June 20, 1819, as Jacob (or Jakob) Offenbach to a Jewish family in Cologne, a city in Germany that was then part of Prussia. He was born in the Großer Griechenmarkt, a location near the Offenbachplatz, a square now named after him. He was the second son and the seventh of ten children of Isaac Juda Offenbach (born Eberst, 1779–1850) and Marianne Rindskopf (born about 1783–1840). Isaac, who came from a musical family, had left his job as a bookbinder and earned a living by singing in synagogues and playing the violin in cafés. He was known as "der Offenbacher" after his hometown, Offenbach am Main, and in 1808 officially changed his surname to Offenbach. In 1816, Isaac moved to Cologne, where he taught singing, violin, flute, and guitar, and composed both religious and secular music.
When Jacob was six years old, his father taught him to play the violin. Within two years, he began composing songs and dances, and by age nine, he started learning the cello. At that time, Isaac was the permanent cantor of the local synagogue, which allowed him to pay for Jacob to study with Bernhard Breuer, a well-known cellist. By age twelve, Jacob was performing his own compositions, which were so difficult that his teacher, Breuer, was surprised. Jacob, along with his brother Julius (violin) and sister Isabella (piano), played in a trio at local dance halls, inns, and cafés, performing popular music and operatic arrangements. In 1833, Isaac decided his sons Julius (18 years old) and Jacob (14 years old) needed to leave Cologne to study in Paris. With help from local music lovers and the municipal orchestra, who gave them a farewell concert on October 9, the two brothers, accompanied by their father, traveled to Paris in November 1833.
Isaac had letters of introduction to Luigi Cherubini, the director of the Paris Conservatoire, but had to convince Cherubini to let Jacob audition. Jacob’s age and nationality made it hard for him to be admitted. Cherubini had once refused a young Franz Liszt for similar reasons but eventually agreed to hear Jacob play. After listening, Cherubini said, "Enough, young man, you are now a pupil of this Conservatoire." Julius was also admitted. Both brothers changed their names to French forms: Julius became Jules, and Jacob became Jacques.
Isaac hoped to find permanent work in Paris but failed and returned to Cologne. Before leaving, he found pupils for Jules, and the income from teaching, along with fees from synagogue choirs, supported the brothers during their studies. At the Conservatoire, Jules worked hard, graduated, and became a successful violin teacher and conductor. He also played first violin in his brother’s orchestra for several years. Jacques, however, disliked academic study and left after one year. The Conservatoire’s records note that he left "on 2 December 1834 (left of his own free will)."
After leaving the Conservatoire, Offenbach was free from strict academic rules but struggled financially. He took temporary jobs in theatre orchestras before being hired in 1835 as a cellist at the Opéra-Comique. He was not serious about his work and often had his pay reduced for playing pranks during performances. For example, he and the principal cellist alternated notes in the printed score, and once sabotaged music stands to make them collapse mid-performance. Despite this, his orchestral work allowed him to study with Louis-Pierre Norblin, a famous cellist. He impressed composer and conductor Fromental Halévy, who gave him lessons in composition and orchestration and wrote to Isaac in Cologne that Jacques would become a great composer. Some of Offenbach’s early works were performed by conductor Louis-Antoine Jullien. In 1839, he collaborated with Friedrich von Flotow on pieces for cello and piano. Though Offenbach wanted to compose for the stage, he could not gain entry to Parisian theatres at first. With Flotow’s help, he built a reputation by performing in Parisian salons and gained pupils. In 1838, the Théâtre du Palais-Royal commissioned him to compose songs for the play Pascal et Chambord, staged in March 1839. In January 1839, he and his brother gave their first public concert.
From 1839, Offenbach frequently performed at the salon of Madeleine-Sophie, comtesse de Vaux. There, he met Hérminie d’Alcain, the 15-year-old daughter of a Carlist general. They fell in love and became engaged in 1843, but Offenbach could not afford to marry. To expand his fame and income, he toured France and Germany, performing with musicians like Anton Rubinstein and Franz Liszt in Cologne in September 1843. In 1844, likely through English family connections of Hérminie, he toured England, where he performed with famous musicians such as Felix Mendelssohn, Joseph Joachim, Michael Costa, and Julius Benedict. The Era newspaper wrote of his London debut, "His execution and taste excited both wonder and pleasure, the genius he exhibited amounting to absolute inspiration." British newspapers reported a royal command performance at Windsor, where he played for Emperor of Russia, King of Saxony, Queen Victoria, and Prince Albert. The use of the German title "Herr" in British press reflected that Offenbach remained a Prussian citizen, a fact that sometimes caused confusion later when France and Prussia became enemies.
Returning to Paris, Offenbach’s reputation and finances improved. The last obstacle to his marriage to Hérminie was their different religions; he converted to Roman Catholicism, with the comtesse de Vaux as his sponsor. Isaac Offenbach’s views on his son’s conversion are unknown. The wedding took place on August 14, 1844, when Hérminie was 17 and Offenbach was 25. Their marriage lasted a lifetime and was happy, despite some affairs on Offenbach’s part. After his death, a friend said Hérminie "gave him courage, shared his ordeals and comforted him always with tenderness and devotion."
Returning to Parisian salons, Offenbach shifted his focus from being a cellist who composed to being a
Works
In The Musical Times, Mark Lubbock wrote in 1957:
Other well-known songs by Offenbach include "Les oiseaux dans la charmille" (the Doll Song from The Tales of Hoffmann); "Voici le sabre de mon père" and "Ah! Que j'aime les militaires" (from La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein); and "Tu n'es pas beau" from La Périchole, which Lamb noted was Offenbach's last major song for Hortense Schneider.
According to Offenbach himself, he composed more than 100 operas. However, the number and the term "opera" are subject to debate. Some of his works were revised so many times that he counted the revised versions as new. Most commentators refer to his stage works as operettas, not operas. Offenbach used the term opérette (operetta) or opérette bouffe for some of his one-act works, while he more often used opéra bouffe for his full-length operas. The French term opérette began to be used for longer works after the Operette genre developed further in Vienna after 1870. Offenbach also used the term opéra-comique for at least 24 of his works, which had one, two, or three acts.
Offenbach's earliest operettas were short, one-act pieces for small casts. More than 30 of these were performed before his first full-scale opéra bouffon, Orphée aux enfers, in 1858. He composed over 20 more one-act operettas during the rest of his career. Lamb, following the work of Henseler's 1930 study, divided these one-act pieces into five categories: (i) rural scenes; (ii) city operettas; (iii) military operettas; (iv) farces; and (v) burlesques or parodies. Offenbach's greatest success came in the 1860s. His most popular operettas from that decade remain among his best-known works.
Offenbach usually provided the first ideas for his operettas' plots. His librettists (the writers of the words) worked based on his suggestions. Lamb wrote, "In this way, Offenbach was well supported and skilled at finding talented collaborators. Like Sullivan, and unlike Johann Strauss II, he consistently had usable story ideas and witty librettos." When setting his librettists' words to music, Offenbach used the rhythmic flexibility of the French language. Sometimes, he forced words into unnatural stresses, which Harding noted as "wrought much violence on the French language." A common feature of Offenbach's music was the repeated use of isolated syllables for comic effect. An example is the quintet for the kings in La belle Hélène: "Je suis l'époux de la reine/Poux de la reine/Poux de la reine" and "Le roi barbu qui s'avance/Bu qui s'avance/Bu qui s'avance."
Generally, Offenbach followed simple, established musical forms. His melodies are usually short and have consistent rhythms, rarely moving beyond "the despotism of the four-bar phrase," as Hughes noted. Offenbach was cautious with modulation (changing keys), rarely using remote or unexpected keys. He mostly stayed within a tonic–dominant–subdominant pattern. Within these traditional limits, he used rhythm creatively, contrasting fast, rhythmic phrases for one singer with smooth, flowing phrases for another to show their characters. He often switched quickly between major and minor keys to contrast characters or situations. When he wanted to, Offenbach used unconventional techniques, such as the leitmotif, which he used throughout Docteur Ox (1877) and to parody Wagner in La carnaval des revues (1860).
In his early works for the Bouffes-Parisiens, the small orchestra pit limited Offenbach to an ensemble of 16 players. He composed for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, piston, trombone, percussion (including timpani), and a small string section of seven players. After moving to the Salle Choiseul, he had an orchestra of 30 players. Musicologist Jean-Christophe Keck noted that when larger orchestras were available, Offenbach adjusted his compositions or rearranged existing music. Surviving scores show his use of additional wind and brass instruments, as well as extra percussion. When available, he wrote for cor anglais, harp, and—exceptionally—ophicleide (Le Papillon), tubular bells (Le carnaval des revues), and a wind machine (Le voyage dans la lune).
Hughes described Offenbach's orchestration as "always skilful, often delicate, and occasionally subtle." He cited Pluton's song in Orphée aux enfers, introduced by a three-bar phrase for solo clarinet and bassoon in octaves, then repeated on solo flute and bassoon an octave higher. Keck observed that "Offenbach's orchestral scoring is full of details, elaborate counter-voices, and minute interactions colored by woodwinds or brass, all of which create a dialogue with the voices. His refinement of design equals that of Mozart or Rossini."
According to Keck, Offenbach first wrote down melodies suggested by a libretto in a notebook or directly on the librettist's manuscript. He then wrote vocal parts in the center of full-score manuscript paper, followed by a piano accompaniment at the bottom, possibly with orchestration notes. When he was confident the work would be performed, he began full orchestration, often using a shorthand method.
Offenbach was known for parodying other composers' music. Some composers appreciated the humor, while others did not. Adam, Auber, and Meyerbeer enjoyed Offenbach's parodies of their scores. Meyerbeer attended all Bouffes-Parisiens productions, always sitting in Offenbach's private box. Composers who were not amused included Berlioz and Wagner. Offenbach mocked Berlioz's "strivings after the antique," and his initial satire of Wagner's style later turned into genuine dislike. Berlioz grouped Offenbach and Wagner together as "the product of the mad German mind," while Wagner ignored Berlioz and wrote unflattering verses about Offenbach.
Generally, Offenbach's parodic technique involved using original music in unexpected or incongruous situations. He inserted the banned revolutionary anthem La Marseillaise into the chorus of rebellious gods in Orphée aux enfers and quoted the aria "Che farò" from Gluck's
Legacy and reputation
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Jacques Offenbach had a strong influence on some French composers who came after him. However, his immediate successor, Lecocq, tried to stay different from Offenbach by avoiding the rhythmic styles that were common in Offenbach's works. Francis Poulenc, in his biography of Emmanuel Chabrier, noted that Chabrier admired Offenbach and even copied some of his musical details. For example, the song "Donnez-vous la peine de vous asseoir" from Le chanson du pal is directly inspired by "Roi barbu qui s'avance, bu qui s'avance" from La belle Hélène. Poulenc believed that this influence passed through Chabrier and André Messager and even reached his own music. The composer and musicologist Wilfrid Mellers found that some of Offenbach's musical style is present in Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias.
In 1980, the musician and author Fritz Spiegl wrote, "Without Offenbach, there would have been no Savoy Opera… no Die Fledermaus or The Merry Widow." The two creators of the Savoy operas, the librettist Gilbert and the composer Sullivan, were both influenced by Offenbach and his collaborators in their satirical and musical styles. They even borrowed some plot ideas. For example, Faris argues that the mock-oriental opera Ba-ta-clan influenced The Mikado, including the character names, such as Offenbach's "Ko-ko-ri-ko" and Gilbert's "Ko-Ko." The best-known example of a Savoy opera drawing from Offenbach's work is The Pirates of Penzance (1879), where both Gilbert and Sullivan used the same approach as in Les brigands (1869) to show the police marching ineffectually. Les brigands was performed in London in 1871, 1873, and 1875, and before the first of these, Gilbert translated the libretto of Meilhac and Halévy into English.
Although young Sullivan was influenced by Offenbach, the influence was not one-way. Hughes observed that two numbers in Offenbach's Maître Péronilla (1878) are very similar to "My name is John Wellington Wells" from The Sorcerer (1877) by Gilbert and Sullivan.
Offenbach's popularity in Vienna inspired local composers to follow his style. He encouraged Johann Strauss to turn to operetta when they met in Vienna in 1864, but Strauss did not begin writing operettas until seven years later. In his first successful operetta, Die Fledermaus (1874), and its successors, Strauss followed the style developed by his colleague in Paris. The libretto for Die Fledermaus was adapted from a play by Meilhac and Halévy, and the operetta specialist Richard Traubner noted that Strauss was influenced by "the two brilliant party scenes" in Offenbach's La vie parisienne. A leading Viennese critic said that composers should "remain within the realm of pure operetta," a rule that Offenbach followed, and among Strauss's later stage works was Prinz Methusalem (1877), described by Lamb as "a satirical Offenbachian piece."
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. Traubner wrote that Suppé's early works clearly imitated Offenbach, and his operas, as well as Strauss's, were "unmistakably Parisian (as much derived from Meilhac and Halévy as from Offenbach)." Suppé's Das Pensionnat (The Boarding School, 1860) not only emulates Offenbach but also references him in the first act, when the heroine, Sophie, and her friends learn about the can-can and dance it. Suppé's most enduring one-act success, Die schöne Galathée (The Beautiful Galatea, 1865), was modeled, in both title and style, on Offenbach's La belle Hélène, which had been a great success in Vienna earlier that year.
In the Cambridge Opera Journal in 2014, the musicologist Micaela Baranello wrote that Franz Lehár's operettas have a strong Offenbachian element, alongside what she calls a "folksy, imaginary" Mitteleuropan one. She cites eight numbers in The Merry Widow that are in the Parisian tradition, including "the percussive nonsense syllables familiar from Offenbach." Elsewhere in Europe, Offenbach was an important influence on the development of zarzuela in Spain, and the 20th-century German composer Kurt Weill described his own Der Kuhhandel (Cattle Trading) as "an operetta influenced by Offenbach."
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. Lamb wrote, "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," and according to the historian Adrian Wright, the 1858 New York premiere of Les deux aveugles made Offenbach "a Broadway constant," putting his works in vogue in America until the end of the century. He influenced some American composers such as John Philip Sousa in his operetta El Capitan (1896). Sousa's contemporary, David Braham, was dubbed "the American Offenbach," and included phrases from Offenbach's scores in his own music. Later, Lamb found 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. In a 2005 study of Lerner and Loewe, Gene Lees wrote, "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."
During Offenbach's lifetime and in the obituary notices in 1880, some critics (called "Musical Snobs Ltd" by Gammond) did not agree with the public's appreciation of his work. In a 1980 article in The Musical Times, George Hauger commented that these critics not only underrated Offenbach, but wrongly believed his music would soon be forgotten. Although most critics of the time made that assumption, a few recognized Offenbach's unique qualities; in The Times, Francis Hueffer wrote, "none of his numerous Parisian imitators has ever been able to rival Offenbach at his best." Nevertheless, the paper joined in the general prediction: "It is very doubtful whether any of his works will survive." 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 currente calamo, and the lack of development of his choicest inspirations will, it is to be feared, keep them from reaching even the next generation." After the posthumous production of The Tales of Hoffmann, The Times partially reconsidered its judgment, writing, "Les Contes de Hoffmann [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" by taking it for granted that the opera "will uphold Offenbach's fame long after his lighter compositions have passed out of memory."
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." While granting that Offenbach's best operettas are full of grace, charm, and wit, Zola blamed him for what others have made of the genre. Zola called 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.
The mid-20th-century critic Sacheverell Sitwell compared Offenbach's lyrical and comic gifts to those of Mozart and Rossini. Otto Klemperer, although best known as a conductor of the German symphonic classics, was an admirer of Offenbach; late in