Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach (20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) is a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the romantic period.

He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann.

He is a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr. and Arthur Sullivan.

His best-known works are continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st.

The Tales of Hoffman remains part of the standard opera repertory.

Born in Cologne, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach shows early musical talent.

At the age of 14, he is accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but finds academic study unfulfilling and leaves after a year.

From 1835 to 1855, he earns his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor.

His ambition, however, is to compose comic pieces for the musical theater.

Finding the management of Paris's Opéra-Comique company uninterested in staging his works, in 1855 he leases a small theater in the Champs-Élysées.

There he presents a series of his own small-scale pieces, many of which become popular.

In 1858, Offenbach produces his first full-length operetta, Orphée aux enfers ("Orpheus in the Underworld"), which is exceptionally well received and has remained one of his most played works.

During the 1860s, he produces at least 18 full-length operettas, as well as more one-act pieces.

His works from this period include La belle Hélène (1864), La vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) and La Périchole (1868).

The risqué humor (often about sexual intrigue) and mostly gentle satiric barbs in these pieces, together with Offenbach's facility for melody, make them internationally known, and translated versions were successful in Vienna, London and elsewhere in Europe.

Offenbach becomes associated with the Second French Empire of Napoleon III; the emperor and his court ae genially satirized in many of Offenbach's operettas.

Napoleon personally granta him French citizenship and the Légion d'Honneur.

With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Offenbach finds himself out of favor in Paris because of his imperial connections and his German birth.

He remains successful in Vienna and London, however.

He reestablishes himself in Paris during the 1870s, with revivals of some of his earlier favorites and a series of new works, and undertakes a popular U.S. tour.

In his last years, he strives to finish The Tales of Hoffmann, but dies before the premiere of the opera, which has entered the standard repertory in versions completed or edited by other musicians.

No related events match the current filters.