Jacques Offenbach, composer of comic operas

Jacques Offenbach was born on 20^th June 1819 in Cologne, Germany. He was originally given the names Jacob Levy, and his family name had been changed by his father from Eberst because he had moved from the town of Offenbach am Main and thenceforward had been known by everyone as “Der Offenbacher”.

The Offenbach family was Jewish and Offenbach senior had moved to become cantor at the local synagogue, as well as giving violin lessons. Jacques joined the musical endeavours of the large family (he was the seventh child) and gave his first concert, as a cellist, when he was 12.

Jacques moved to Paris when he was accepted to study cello at the Conservatoire in November 1833. However, he did not distinguish himself and left after only one year, becoming a cellist in the orchestra of the Opéra-Comique.

While at the Opéra-Comique he formed a partnership with the young composer Friedrich Flotow, producing a series of pieces for cello and piano which they played in recitals.

He later wrote incidental music for performances at the Palais Royal, and a large number of songs, but he found that playing the cello was more remunerative. He made several concert tours and played before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in London in 1844.

When he felt that he had made enough money from performing he returned to Paris and devoted himself to composition, as well as converting to Catholicism and marrying a Spanish lady named Herminie de Alcain. His aim was to write a box-office hit of a comic opera, but his early efforts were disappointing and he was unable to get anything staged.

He returned to Cologne during the revolution in France of 1848, only trying his luck again in Paris in 1849, when he was appointed conductor of the Comédie Française, a post which he retained for five years. This position did however give him the opportunity to slip some of his own pieces into performances as incidental music.

His frustration at not getting his operatic work performed on stage, apart from a few minor performances, eventually led to him taking the plunge and, in 1855, leasing his own theatre, a very small one in the Champs-Elysées where the licence only allowed productions that had no more than four speaking/singing parts.

Later that year he moved to another theatre which he renamed the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens and which soon acquired a reputation for lively entertainment comprising humour, dance and song.

Offenbach wrote quickly and could produce up to seven complete productions in a year. He engaged up-and-coming scriptwriters and some of the best singing talent around, and his shows became very successful. Some of his shows were exported to London with Offenbach conducting them in person.

His first major success was “Orphée aux Enfers” (Orpheus in the Underworld) in 1858, a highly satirical work that poked fun at some of the leading figures of the day, as well as including suggestive dances such as the can-can. Needless to say, a show with such a terrible reputation encouraged everyone to flock to see it, and it still plays to packed houses to this day despite the satirical barbs being lost on modern audiences.

Offenbach was far more successful as a composer of light music than as a theatre director, as he had no money sense and spent far too much on such things as stage sets and costumes. Despite his huge popularity and growing reputation he was never a rich man.

Other operettas that are still staged today include “La Belle Hélène”, “La Vie Parisienne” and “La Périchole”. The music is always tuneful and often lively, although with no great depth. This is, after, the music of comedy and farce rather than tragedy.

In the 1870s Offenbach made many visits to Vienna where it is said that he persuaded Johann Strauss to venture into operetta. He certainly influenced many other composers of light music in Vienna and elsewhere, such as Franz von Suppé. The Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were England’s answer to Offenbach, given that French naughtiness was not quite the thing for Victorian London.

Offenbach had much less success in the United States, where American audiences failed to appreciate French wit. He also nearly died from the effects of the sea voyage across the Atlantic.

Like many composers of light music, Offenbach dreamed of writing something more serious, and his “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” was supposed to fill this gap in his output. However, although he lived to complete it he was never able to see it performed because he died, from heart disease, on 4^th October 1880 at the age of 61.

Offenbach’s reputation rests on the works mentioned above, although his output was considerably greater, with nearly a hundred operettas being credited to him. These pieces are largely forgotten due to their having been written for the immediate purpose of putting bums on seats in a Paris theatre. Also ignored today are his ballet music and his many pieces for solo cello.

However, even if all that had survived of his output was “Orphée aux Enfers”, that one comic masterpiece should be sufficient for Offenbach’s name to be remembered with affection.

© John Welford