Jacques Offenbach was a German-born French composer, cellist, and impresario, renowned for his contributions to the development of operetta.
- Born: June 20, 1819, in Cologne, Prussia (now Germany)
- Died: October 5, 1880, in Paris, France
Offenbach showed early musical talent and was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 14. However, 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 was to compose comic pieces for the musical theatre.
In 1855, finding the management of Paris’s Opéra-Comique company uninterested in staging his works, Offenbach leased a small theatre in the Champs-Élysées. There, he presented a series of more than two dozen of his own small-scale pieces, many of which became popular. His first full-length operetta, “Orphée aux enfers” (“Orpheus in the Underworld”), produced in 1858 with its celebrated can-can, was exceptionally well received and has remained his most played work.
During the 1860s, he produced at least eighteen full-length operettas, including “La belle Hélène” (1864), “La Vie parisienne” (1866), “La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein” (1867), and “La Périchole” (1868). The risqué humor and mostly gentle satiric barbs in these pieces, along with Offenbach’s facility for melody, made them internationally known.
Offenbach became associated with the Second French Empire of Napoleon III, who personally granted him French citizenship and the Légion d’honneur. However, with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and the fall of the empire, Offenbach found himself out of favor in Paris due to his imperial connections and his German birth. Despite this, he remained successful in Vienna, London, and New York.
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 musicians12. Offenbach’s legacy includes nearly 100 operettas and the influential opera “The Tales of Hoffmann,” which continues to be a part of the standard opera repertory.
