1 French Operetta: Offenbach and Company

john kenrick

Introduction
Jacques Offenbach is the grandfather of musical theatre as we know it.
Oklahoma, A Chorus Line, Hamilton – all are direct descendants of his
operettas. He composed almost a hundred of them, the best of which
became the first musicals to enjoy international popularity. And
Offenbach’s trademark combination of infectious melody, wry humour
and sheer fun still echoes through the great stage and screen musicals of
our time. He did not invent operetta, but he was the first to write operettas
that earned worldwide acclaim.
In mid-nineteenth-century Paris, a city obsessed with appearances,
Offenbach’s appearance was anything but average. Standing barely five feet
tall, he had a pencil-thin build. To offset his oversized hawk-like nose, he grew
shoulder-length hair and mutton-chop whiskers. A casual observer might
have thought him just another eccentric. But anyone who looked into his
dark, penetrating eyes could see the passion that made him an artistic pioneer.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, just what is operetta? Some sources have
defined it as a comic or lighter alternative to grand opera, but that tells us what
operetta is not. I respectfully offer a more comprehensive definition:
Operetta is a versatile form of musical that integrates songs and musical
sequences with dialogue to dramatize a story, retaining the vocal pyrotechnics
and forms of grand opera (arias, choruses, act finales, etc.) but relying on more
accessible melodies. The songs develop character and/or advance the plot, which
can be comic, romantic, or a combination of both.1
Musical theatre requires a sizeable audience, so it must reflect the popular
culture of its era. In order to understand Offenbach and the birth of French
operetta, we have to consider the city and the ethos that inspired and
embraced his work.

Paris and the Second Empire

Sometime in the third century BC, a Celtic tribe called the Parisii estab-
lished a trading centre on an island in the middle of the Seine, now called
[17] the Île de la Cité. Under the Romans, the settlement expanded on both

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 18 John Kenrick

banks of the river. In 508, the Frankish kings made it their capital. By the
Middle Ages, Paris was one of Europe’s premier cities. It became a filthy,
treacherous labyrinth of streets and alleyways, with palaces and slums
within a stone’s throw of each other.
More than stones flew when the first French Revolution began in the
1780s. Once Parisians discovered that mobs and barricades could topple
governments, they made a habit of it. Republican regimes came and went,
heads rolled off the guillotine, and Napoleon Bonaparte’s empire rose and
fell. When ‘Citizen King’ Louis Philippe was swept off his throne in 1848,
a Second Republic was declared.
Political uncertainty fed a nostalgia for happier times. Louis Bonaparte
(1808–73), a nephew of Napoleon and a masterful manipulator of public
opinion, returned from exile and got himself elected first president of the
new republic. In 1851, he staged a coup and declared himself dictator. Press
opposition was silenced, and a revised constitution reduced the National
Assembly to little more than a rubber stamp. Within a year Louis ‘allowed’
himself to be declared emperor. Because a cousin (twenty years dead) had
technically inherited Napoleon I’s crown for a few days, Louis dubbed
himself Napoleon III.
Once in power, the ruler of the so-called Second Empire encouraged
financial expansion. The Industrial Revolution did wonders for the French
economy. Manufacturing, shipping and business investments flourished.
But could a rejuvenated empire be content with an ageing and rebellion-
prone capital city? Although a major manufacturing centre, Paris was
strangled by a tangle of narrow, putrid streets.2
The emperor appointed Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann,
a bureaucrat with a genius for organization, to oversee the rebuilding of
Paris. When public funds ran short, Haussmann quietly borrowed billions
from a government-owned bank. Much of Paris was literally rebuilt on
credit. As the historic web of twisting streets was demolished, over three
hundred thousand impoverished Parisians were forcibly relocated to outer
arrondissements that soon became as desperate as the old ones.3 New
boulevards, too broad to be barricaded, were lined by townhouses and
posh apartment buildings designed for the expanding upper-middle class.
These residential structures were restricted to six storeys, giving the boule-
vards a handsome uniformity. Occasional imperfections were intentionally
included to prevent monotony.4 Glass-covered arcades called passages led off
the boulevards to provide access to shops, boîtes and cafés. Parisians became
boulevardiers, regularly strolling the streets to admire the latest additions.
Haussmann sprinkled Paris with public parks, and the grounds of Louis
Napoleon’s Tuileries Palace were opened to the public. The imperial
residence was handsomely redecorated, but all was done on the cheap.

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 19 French Operetta: Offenbach and Company

The new imperial silverware was merely gilt. The shiny ‘golden’ imperial
insignia shining on army uniforms were brass. No one really cared. If all
that glittered was not gold, at least there was plenty of glitter – and
appearances were what mattered. Masked balls at the Tuileries and else-
where gave the impression of Paris as a never-ending carnival.5
Much of the glitter was provided by the emperor, his courtiers and the
nobles and diplomats who made up the beau monde of Parisian high
society. Many are attracted by shiny objects, and Second Empire Paris
attracted adventurers of every stripe. Investors and charlatans crowded the
bustling stock exchange in the Place de la Bourse. Fortunes were made and
lost on a daily basis. Men with money attracted the attentions of a new
breed of courtesans known as grandes horizontales. Their beauty and
scandalous behaviour made these women celebrities in their own right.
They were one of the most visible elements of the demi-monde, which
historian Virginia Rounding has described as ‘that half-way world between
respectable high society and the low life of the common prostitute . . .
where nothing is quite as it seems’.6
The demi-monde included artists, actors, shady business men, would-
be courtesans – anyone who looked more respectable than they were. And
looking respectable was easier thanks to department stores that sold
affordable, mass-produced haute couture. Anyone who could scrape
together a few sous could fit in while strolling among the rich and powerful
or sitting beside them in theatres.
Journalists faced stern censorship, but those who wrote for the stage
had an easier time. As long as one avoided direct attacks on the emperor or
his government, there was room for creativity. Opera and theatre flour-
ished, attracting an ongoing procession of talented hopefuls anxious to
make their mark in Paris. Most were French, but some were immigrants –
including the composer who would become the musical voice of
the Second Empire.

Offenbach: Early Life and Career

Isaac Eberst was an itinerant Jewish musician in southern Prussia. Hoping
to avoid anti-Semitic prejudice, he renamed his family after Offenbach-
am-Main, a suburb of Frankfurt. By the time his seventh child, Jakob
Offenbach, was born on 20 June 20 1819, Isaac was cantor of a Cologne
synagogue. Jakob showed an early passion for music. Encouraged to study
the violin, he insisted on switching to the cello, on which he proved to be
a prodigy. He formed a trio with a brother and a sister and played in local
restaurants.

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 20 John Kenrick

Determined to give his son every opportunity, Isaac sent thirteen-year-

old Jakob to Paris. The Conservatoire admitted only native French stu-
dents, but Jakob’s audition won him immediate admission. Within a year,
the headstrong teen quit the school and joined the orchestra of the Opéra-
Comique. He was befriended by chorus master Fromental Halévy, who
instructed the ambitious youngster in composing for the stage. Two years
later in 1837, Johann Strauss the Elder brought his Viennese orchestra to
Paris, where his waltzes became the rage. Offenbach quickly published
several waltzes of his own, winning his first taste of celebrity. To make his
name sound less foreign, he began billing himself as ‘Jacques Offenbach’.
Offenbach began turning out songs as well as dance music. He per-
formed at the finest soirées, where he charmed some of the most influential
people in France. With the beau monde in attendance, his cello concerts
became social events. He toured England, giving a command performance
for Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. On his return to Paris, he converted
to Catholicism and married Hérminie d’Alcain.
Offenbach wanted to write full-length musical stage works – but some-
thing lighter than grand opera. The Comédie-Française appointed him
musical director and allowed him to provide incidental music and songs
for various plays. But company policy forbade full-length musical produc-
tions. While the government considered Offenbach’s application for
a licence to open a theatre of his own, he wrote Oyayaye ou La reine des
îles, a musical farce presented for a few performances at the Folies-Nouvelles.
The manager there was Florimond Ronger (1825–92), a trail blazing operetta
composer who protected his job as a church organist by writing and
performing in stage works under the pseudonym Hervé. He wrote more
than 120 operettas, but because his licence limited him to no more than two
singing characters, his dramatic options were limited. Although tuneful,
Hervé’s works never found a large audience outside of Paris (his late work
Mam’zelle Nitouche excepted). Hervé may have been the first French oper-
etta composer, but, thanks to talent, timing and sheer determination,
Offenbach would turn this local phenomenon into a worldwide sensation.

The Right Time

In 1851, Great Britain built a 990,000-square foot steel and plate glass
‘Crystal Palace’ in London to house a world’s fair. Celebrating the miracles
of modern English industry, it drew millions of visitors. Not to be outdone,
Louis Napoleon started planning an 1855 Exposition Universelle of his own
to showcase France’s economic advancement under his reign. Offenbach
realized that masses of fairgoers looking for entertainment would provide

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 21 French Operetta: Offenbach and Company

a unique opportunity. He leased a dilapidated wooden theatre on the

avenue des Champs-Élysées, crammed in a few hundred seats and dubbed
it the Bouffes-Parisiens.7
With the help of several well-connected admirers – including Henri de
Villesment, founder of the newspaper Le Figaro – he obtained a licence to
present comic plays with music. Because of the small size of the theatre, the
licence limited Offenbach to one-act works with no more than three
characters; a fourth non-singing character could be added for an added
fee. Offenbach had a new one-act operetta ready. But audiences would
expect a full evening’s entertainment. To create additional material, he
called in Ludovic Halévy (1834–1908), an aspiring playwright and nephew
to Fromental Halévy. (Who you know mattered even then!) It was the
beginning of what would prove to be a long and profitable collaboration.
The Bouffes-Parisiens opened on 5 July 1855. The programme included
a prologue (Entrez, Messieurs, Mesdames), a pastoral (Une nuit blanche)
and a pantomime. But the highlight was the operetta Les deux aveugles.
Billed as a ‘bouffonnerie musicale’, this half-hour long one-acter involved
two beggars pretending to be blind while battling for the right to panhan-
dle on a popular bridge. Such con men were common on the streets of
Paris. Étienne Pradeau and Jean-François Berthelier triumphed as the
beggars.
With jaded tastes and substantial disposable income, Parisians had
developed a craving for anything new and sensational. They packed the
Bouffes-Parisiens nightly, and Offenbach’s theatre became the place to be
seen. Tickets were so hard to get that the composer’s wife had to sit on the
aisle steps. The emperor was unwilling to appear at a theatre that was not
funded by his government but got around that by having a command
performance at the Tuileries.
During the run, Offenbach was introduced to Berthelier’s mistress,
soprano Hortense Schneider (1833–1920). When she auditioned for the
composer, he stopped her before she had finished her second song and
hired her on the spot. She made her Bouffes debut soon afterwards and
proved an immediate sensation. Although not a great beauty, her charm
and stage presence were undeniable. We can only wonder if either the
composer or the soprano realized that each would become a defining factor
in the other’s career.
When the chill winds of autumn forced the Exposition to close, Les
deux aveugles was still playing to capacity houses. Offenbach leased
a winter-friendly theatre located in the Passage Choiseul, a fashionable
shopping arcade on the rue Monsigny. After costly renovations, Offenbach
had a 900-seat jewel box auditorium with excellent sight lines and acous-
tics. He gave this venue the old name of Bouffes-Parisiens.

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 22 John Kenrick

On 29 December 1855, the new theatre opened with Ba-ta-clan, a one-

act ‘chinoiserie musicale’. Fé-an-nich-ton and Ké-ki-ka-ko are two
Parisians stranded in the royal court of China. While plotting their return
home, they learn that Emperor Fè-ni-han is another stranded Parisian. To
everyone’s surprise, the scheming captain of the guard, Ko-ko-ri-ko (the
French equivalent of ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’), is yet another Parisian. This
unseen character communicates via notes and sends the other three back
to France so that he can become the new ruler.
This was Offenbach and Halévy’s first major collaboration. The music
spoofed grand opera, with quotations of Meyerbeer melodies thrown in.
The libretto, in which political power was a joke, court life empty mum-
mery and an emperor a poseur, was a sly comic reflection of the French
court. But the show was so charming and the satire so genial that it would
have looked clumsy if Louis Napoleon’s censors had tried to shut it down.
So, the emperor and his ministers joined in the applause, and Ba-ta-clan
thrived.
The true challenge of theatrical success is to keep the hits coming.
And Offenbach had to keep standards high. The intimacy of the
Bouffes-Parisiens meant that the lyrics and dialogue mattered just as
much as the music, and artistic flaws were hard to miss. In an 1856
article, he wrote:

In an opera which lasts only three quarters of an hour, in which only four
characters are allowed and an orchestra of at most thirty persons is employed,
one must have ideas and tunes that are as genuine as hard cash. It is also worthy
of note that with a small orchestra, such as incidentally sufficed for Mozart and
Cimarosa, it is very difficult to cover up mistakes and ineptitudes such as an
orchestra of eighty players can gloss over without difficulty.8

In 1856, Offenbach wrote and produced seven one-act operettas. The zany
plots were always rooted in social satire. In Le 66 (1856), a peasant thinks
he holds the winning lottery ticket 66, only to find out that he’s actually got
number 99. Unable to meet the constant demand for new operettas,
Offenbach presented comic operas by Adam, Mozart and Rossini. He
also held a competition, asking composers to create music for a Halévy
libretto. There were two winners – Charles Lecocq (1832–1913) and
Georges Bizet. Both versions were presented at the Bouffes. But Lecocq,
infuriated by the implication that anyone was his equal, held a lifelong
grudge against Offenbach.
Offenbach usually did not compose until he had a completed libretto in
hand. A speedy worker, he was always pushing Halévy and other play-
wrights to deliver. Offenbach even had a writing desk installed in his
carriage so that he could compose during Paris traffic jams. Uneasy with

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 23 French Operetta: Offenbach and Company

solitude. he threw lavish parties and sketched new melodies amid chatter
and gossip. His attention to musical detail was extraordinary. He purposely
used tempi and melodies to strengthen the overall dramatic effect. Even so,
nothing he wrote was sacrosanct. Once rehearsals began, he would ruth-
lessly cut and revise material. After premieres, any music that did not
please the public was disposed of.
Offenbach’s melodies delighted all classes, with his music equally at
home in taverns and in ballrooms. Tourists took these melodies home with
them, and Offenbach’s songs swept through Europe. Offenbach’s troupe
toured the continent in 1857, bringing his works to Vienna and London,
where local translations became standard fare until well into the next
century.

Orpheus in the Underworld: Audiences in Heaven

The more money Offenbach made, the more he spent. He poured profits
into theatre renovations and new productions. He entertained lavishly, was
generous to anyone in need and was an inveterate gambler. So even though
the Bouffes-Parisiens was packed at every performance, the composer and
his company were soon swimming in debt.9
Offenbach’s answer was to dream bigger. Now that Napoleon III
himself was a fan, the government issued the Bouffes a new licence
permitting larger casts. Halévy provided a multi-act libretto inspired by
the Greek myth of Orpheus. Since Halévy had just been appointed
secretary general to the Ministry for Algeria, playwright Hector-
Jonathan Crémieux expanded and revised the text. Anxious to keep his
new job, Halévy gave Crémieux sole credit. While Offenbach avoided bill
collectors by hiding out in a series of hotels and borrowed rooms, he
turned out his most ambitious score up to that point. Having long since
perfected the art of dramatizing characters in intimate works, he and his
collaborators made the transition to writing large-scale operetta with
ease.
When Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) opened on
21 October 1858, it boasted six principals, more than a dozen supporting
characters, a full chorus,and sets by artist Gustave Doré. As in the original
Greek myth, the musician Orpheus goes into the dreaded land of the dead
to bring back his deceased wife Eurydice. But in this version, Orpheus is
bored with his cheating spouse and only makes the trip to placate a nagging
character named Public Opinion. Jupiter and the gods of Olympus are
depicted as vain and capricious, a direct reflection of Louis Napoleon and
his court. However, this operetta’s intention was not to incite rebellion but
to evoke laughter. In the world of opéras bouffes, nobody is perfect, and
everyone can afford to laugh –even at themselves.

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 24 John Kenrick

Jupiter is depicted as an overworked philanderer with a jealous wife and

a self-indulgent mob of courtiers. The king of the gods also shared
Napoleon III’s obsession with public opinion. Jupiter warns the gods,
‘Let us preserve appearances, for everything depends on that!’ But like
his imperial echo, Jupiter has a knack of getting his way. At the end of the
operetta, he frees the beautiful Eurydice from Hades to appease Public
Opinion. But he tricks Orpheus into making a minor mistake and as
a ‘punishment’ sends Eurydice to Olympus to serve as an acolyte to
Bacchus. Orpheus and his unwanted wife are free of each other, Public
Opinion is thwarted, and Jupiter has ready access to a new mistress.
Initial response to the piece was positive, but there were rumblings of
dissent. French intellectuals treated ancient mythology as a serious subject,
and some took issue with Offenbach’s irreverent approach. Six weeks into
the run, just as ticket sales were slowing down, a major critic published an
article vigorously condemning the show for ‘profaning sacred antiquity’.
Sensing an opportunity, Offenbach published a witty reply in a competing
paper – pointing out that the same critic had spoofed mythology in his own
writing. Parisians loved a juicy controversy and wanted to see what was
inspiring this ruckus. Ticket sales soared. After 280 performances, the
exhausted cast demanded a break, protesting that it was unnatural for
a large production to run so long. In a few months, Orphée aux enfers was
reintroduced at the Bouffes, and the composer would revive it whenever
his income needed a boost.
Many of Offenbach’s upbeat melodies have an infectious, giddy lilt that
this author refers to as the ‘Offenbach bounce’. It offers the sonic equiva-
lent of drinking fine champagne – minus any hangover. In Orphée, the god
Mercury’s rondo saltarelle (‘E hop! E hop!’ / Look out! Look out!) sets feet
tapping and inspires delight on the first hearing as well as the hundredth.
And Offenbach’s ‘galop infernal’ in the final scene became the most
popular cancan music of all time. It remains the oldest musical theatre
tune still in widespread use, a universally recognized melodic symbol of
Paris and of French culture.
The lack of international copyright laws made Offenbach’s scores
irresistible to US producers, who staged his works without paying him
a penny in royalties. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, ten or more
Offenbach revivals played on Broadway almost every year. These
productions then made fortunes touring North America, advertised
as coming ‘Direct from Broadway’. The composer wasted little energy
worrying about receiving royalties from the United States or other
countries that ignored French copyrights. With new hits pouring out
of his pen, he earned far more than most composers of his time could
dream of.10

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 25 French Operetta: Offenbach and Company

Offenbachiades: The Golden Years

Orphée aux enfers was the first in a decade-long series of jubilant, full-
length operettas that are referred to as ‘offenbachiades’. These celebratory
send-ups of Second Empire politics and society were so genial and seduc-
tive that no one was quite sure whether Offenbach and his librettists were
critics or publicists of their comic subjects. A few went so far as to call
Offenbach ‘le grand corrupteur’.11 By any measure, Offenbach was
a leading figure in society. In 1860, he formally became a French citizen
and a year later received the Legion of Honour. Then the emperor’s
stepbrother, the influential Duc de Morny, asked to co-author an
Offenbach libretto with Halévy. Monsieur Choufleuri was not a major hit,
but the involvement of a member of the royal family meant that Offenbach
and his operettas were as in vogue as could be.
Aside from his penchant for overspending, he lived the life of
a respectable gentleman. He relished fine clothes, had a fine residence in
Paris and a country estate in Étretat. He made regular trips to the spa at
Ems, where he ‘took the waters’ in a vain attempt to alleviate his chronic
arthritis. When in Paris, he was almost always immersed in composing,
producing and managing his productions. A rare free hour might find him
strolling in the gardens of the Tuileries or conversing with colleagues at
a café. When vacationing or on tour, he pestered collaborators with letters
and telegrams. He was always impatiently waiting for the next libretto or
just the next scene to compose for.
In 1864, Meilhac and Halévy concocted La belle Hélène, inspired by the
legendary Helen of Troy. As Offenbach began turning out a beguiling
score, he realized the title role would be perfect for Hortense Schneider.
However, the actress, who had gone to another company to obtain a higher
salary, had just left that company for the same reason. With no producer
willing to meet her record-breaking demands, Schneider abruptly
announced her retirement, sold her furniture and was packing to leave
Paris.
Offenbach and Halévy showed up at her door, hats in hand. After some
lively negotiation, the two men agreed to pay Schneider an unprecedented
2,000 francs a month. Her temperamental outbursts made rehearsals at the
Théâtre des Variétés exasperating. More than once, Offenbach walked out
swearing he would never return. But in the theatre, triumph heals all
wounds. When La belle Hélène opened, le Tout-Paris embraced the show,
which ran for 700 performances. Within six years, it was performed in
every major theatrical city in Europe and the United States.
In this version, Helen is depicted as the ultimate Parisian courtesan. Bored
with her marriage to the King of Sparta, Helen is so hungry for a change that

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 26 John Kenrick

she welcomes being kidnapped by Paris, the prince of Troy. Once again,
Offenbach and his team turned an ancient legend into a genial satire, but this
time their target was Parisian society’s insatiable thirst for pleasure. The
newest member of that team was co-librettist Henri Meilhac (1830–97),
a journalist and boulevardier-turned-playwright, and a former schoolmate
of Halévy. That acquaintance opened the way to a collaboration that would
last for years. Together, Meilhac and Halévy co-authored the librettos for
several of Offenbach’s greatest hits, as well as numerous plays and eventually
the libretto for Bizet’s Carmen (1875). The two writers became so closely
identified with each other that Offenbach referred to them as ‘Meil-hal’.

Spoofing Courts and Crowns

By 1866, years of over-indulgence were catching up with Louis Napoleon,
who now suffered painful bladder stones. The powerful Duc de Morny died
at age 53 thanks to dissipated living and quack physicians. Even the French
economy, built on reckless investments and a constant cycle of booms and
busts, was showing signs of exhaustion. In an ominous development,
Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck was building a federation of more
than two dozen petty monarchies to form a new German Empire. With
a large and well-equipped army, Germany posed a serious threat to France. In
short, it was the perfect time for an operetta with a macabre sense of humour.
Barbe-bleue (1866) revisited the ghoulish French folktale of a knight
who marries and murders half a dozen wives. But in this version, his chief
poisoner has secretly kept them alive and . . . well serviced. All this occurs
under the nose of a despotic king and his dissolute court. Eventually,
Bluebeard’s latest wife leads the others in humiliating and escaping forever
from their murderous spouse. A century after its debut, this work found
renewed popularity in East Germany, where audiences saw parallels to
their own experiences under a communist dictatorship.
For La vie parisienne (1866), Offenbach, Meilhac and Halévy dispensed
with mythical settings and set the action in contemporary Paris. The plot
involved a boulevardier betting that he could seduce a titled tourist. With
characters from all classes of society, this operetta gave audiences at the
Théâtre du Palais-Royal the opportunity to laugh at mirror images of
themselves. Reality had become improbable enough to be accurately
depicted in a comic operetta.
At one point in La vie parisienne, a Brazilian millionaire arrives, deter-
mined to have a whale of a time in the city of lights. In a rapid-fire rondo
brimming with ‘Offenbach bounce’, he explains that as this is his third visit to
Paris, he knows exactly what to expect:

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 27 French Operetta: Offenbach and Company

I am Brazilian, I have gold,

And I come from Rio de Janeiro
Twenty times richer than before,
Paris, I come back to you again!
Hurray! I just landed,
Put on your false hair, cocottes!
To your false teeth I bring
My whole fortune to consume!
The pigeon comes, so pluck me bare!
Take my dollars, my bank notes,
My watch, my hat, my boots,
But tell me you love me!
I will behave exquisitely,
But you know my nature.
I will get pleasure in return,
Yes, I will get my money’s worth!12

Tourists like this one were about to flood Paris as never before. With
the Second Empire showing serious signs of fatigue, Louis Napoleon
decided to mount another Exposition universelle in 1867. Determined to
make it bigger and more impressive than its predecessor, it was enclosed in
a vast open iron and glass arena. Along with millions of commoners, this
fair drew most of the crowned heads of Europe. All were suitably
impressed by the technological wonders on view at the Expo, but both
royalty and the general public were far more excited to see Offenbach’s
newest opéra bouffe.
Just days after the Expo’s opening, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein
(1867) premiered at the Théâtre des Variétés. Halévy and Meilhac’s libretto
was a hilarious satire of the chaos caused by promiscuous, self-indulgent
monarchs. Thanks in large part to Schneider’s seductive performance,
royals chose to see La Grande-Duchesse as a send-up of Catherine the
Great. But it was aimed at the sexual excesses of monarchs of either gender.
In the operetta, the female ruler of a fictional German duchy has
a weakness for men in uniform. She declares a needless war in order to
find new prospects. Reviewing new recruits, she admits in the ribald ‘Ah,
que j’aime le militaire’:
Ah, how I love the military!
Their cocky uniforms,
Their moustaches and their stiff plumes.13

She promotes Fritz, a handsome but naive private, to the rank of general.
To the dismay of her jealous courtiers, he wins a battle without firing
a shot – by getting the enemy drunk. When he fails to respond to the
duchess’s romantic overtures, she allows her courtiers to humiliate him.

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 28 John Kenrick

Fritz returns to his peasant fiancée, and the Grand Duchess is manoeuvred
into marrying her long-time betrothed, the foppish Prince Paul. She
acquiesces with the wry observation, ‘When you cannot have what you
love, you must love what you have.’
Almost every world leader visiting the exposition made a point of
catching La Grande-Duchesse. Many of them also paid court to leading
lady Hortense Schneider. So many stopped by her dressing room that the
hallway leading to it was dubbed ‘le passage des princes’.14 To Schneider’s
dismay, the same nickname soon applied to her. Her generous admirers
added to her celebrated collection of diamonds. Schneider kept them in
a lockbox in her dressing room, guarded by eight dogs – none of which was
nearly as ferocious as their owner. One afternoon, Schneider’s carriage
arrived at the exposition’s gate. When police explained that only royalty
could drive into the grounds, she replied with mock grandeur, ‘Make way,
I am the Grand Duchess of Gérolstein!’ The gendarmes saluted and passed
her through. No one took offence. After all, the boundary between reality
and make-believe was growing blurrier by the day.

Disaster and Renewal

The public’s appetite for ‘Offenbachiades’ was fading, so Offenbach shifted
gears and stepped closer to the world of opéra comique. Meilhac and
Halévy’s libretto for La Périchole (1868) dispensed with satire, offering
the tale of a beautiful Peruvian street singer who fights off the amorous
obsessions of a viceroy. Hortense Schneider won acclaim as the titular
peasant and kept the Variétés packed for months. In 1869, Offenbach
labelled Vert-Vert an opéra comique, as he did Fantasio (1872), Madame
Favart (1878) and La fille du tambour-major (1879).
When Offenbach and his team offered Schneider another role short on
glamour, she refused – a decision she probably came to regret. Les brigands
(1869) involved a band of common forest bandits out to fleece the Duke of
Milan. They outsmart the carabinieri, military police who proclaim their
approach with the plodding tramp of their boots (‘de bottes, de bottes, de
bottes!’). The carabinieri became the toast of Paris, re-enacting their
number in full costume at balls and parties. With Bismarck threatening
to put a Prussian prince on the Spanish throne, nervous Frenchmen
enjoyed a chance to laugh at men in uniform.
In 1869, Offenbach turned fifty. He was the undisputed master of the
operetta world. Les brigands was the latest in a string of hits reaching back
more than a decade. His scores dominated the stages of Paris, Vienna,
London and New York. His music was familiar to most of the civilized

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 29 French Operetta: Offenbach and Company

word. But sic transit gloria mundi. Within two years, this triumphant
moment would be a bitter memory. Realizing that the French army was
all flash, Bismarck sabotaged peace efforts and lured Louis Napoleon into
the Franco-Prussian War.15 Paris sent the army off to war with patriotic
fervour, singing marches from La Grande-Duchesse. Louis Napoleon and
his disorganized troops suffered a crushing defeat at Sedan in
September 1870, and a Republican government sued for peace. The
emperor went into exile, and that should have been the end of it. But
Paris declared itself an independent commune, and the resulting siege left
thousands dead and much of the city in ruins. Rebuilding began almost
immediately, but the acrimony of defeat lingered.
Post-war Paris belonged to a new and expanding middle class. The
beau monde of the imperial court, and the demi-monde that shadowed
them, were gone. With almost all the other icons of the Second Empire
either dead or in exile, Offenbach became a prime target. The German
press attacked him for being French, the French press attacked him for
being German, and both sides despised him because he was a Jew.
Caricatures depicted ‘the Great Corrupter’ as a monkey, and for a time
the major theatres of Paris would not even consider staging anything by
Offenbach.
The frivolous opéras bouffes of the past were out of fashion, but
Offenbach (as usual) needed money. He turned his energies to opéras
féeries, operettas that stressed large casts, fantasy plots and spectacular
effects. Playwright Victorien Sardou provided the libretto for Le roi Carotte
(1872), in which an irresponsible king is replaced by a magical giant carrot
with a court of dancing vegetables. Le voyage dans la lune (1875) was based
on one of Jules Verne’s outer space novels. Both enjoyed profitable runs.
In between, Charles Lecocq scored a whopping success with his score for
La fille de Madame Angot (1873), the story of a girl seeking romance who
gets tangled up in the aftermath of the 1793 ‘reign of terror’. The historic
setting and straightforward plot meant that it is usually classified as an opéra
comique, but to our ears today it is an operetta. Lecocq wrote several other
hits, most notably Giroflé-Girofla (1874) and Le petit duc (1876). The charm
and easy humour of Lecocq’s operettas were appealing to middle-class
audiences, and he delighted in temporarily eclipsing Offenbach.
Robert Planquette (1848–1903) was a Parisian café pianist who
achieved a surprise success with his first operetta score, Les cloches de
Corneville (1877). A romantic comedy involving mistaken identities in
a French village during the reign of Louis XIV, it proved a great favourite in
London (where it ran for over 700 performances) and New York as The
Chimes of Normandy. Planquette had several other international hits, most
notably Rip Van Winkle (1888).

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 30 John Kenrick

Falling back on his first full-scale hit, Offenbach revived Orphée aux
enfers as a spectacle in 1874. With over 200 in the ensemble and expanded
to four acts, Orphée won fresh praise. Amid all the fun, Parisians found
themselves once again warming to the ageing composer. That same year,
a lavish revival of La Périchole succeeded, with Hortense Schneider back in
the title role. Schneider next starred in Hervé’s La belle poule (1875). When
critics mentioned that the forty-two-year-old diva was looking ‘motherly’,
she promptly retired. That same year, Offenbach debuted no fewer than
five new scores.
Although Offenbach had composed several grand operas over the years,
none had enjoyed major success. He collaborated on and off over several
years with poet Jules Barbier on Les contes d’Hoffmann but kept setting it
aside to complete new operetta scores that were not among his best efforts.
The Opéra-Comique finally agreed to present Hoffmann, but the costly
production suffered a succession of delays. Despite crippling pain, the
composer supervised rehearsals until his health collapsed. Offenbach
died on 5 October 5 1880 at the age of sixty-one. When rain thinned the
crowd at his funeral, one friend never wavered. Hortense Schneider walked
with the coffin all the way to Montmartre Cemetery. In February 1881, Les
contes d’Hoffmann premiered, and it remains a favourite at opera houses
worldwide.
By contrast, the French operettas of Offenbach and his contemporaries
are now rarely performed outside of France. But these works are the artistic
ancestors of musical theatre as we know it, and they are more than echoes
of Second Empire Paris. A century and a half after their premieres, the best
of these works remain insightful and entertaining, with scores rich in
melody and filled with the ‘Offenbach bounce’. And scores that have fallen
out of use are ripe for rediscovery.

Notes
1. John Kenrick, Musical Theatre: A History (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 21.
2. Colin Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City (New York: Viking 2004), 304.
3. Jones. Paris, 318.
4. Stephane Kirkland, Paris Reborn: Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Quest to Build
a Modern City (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013), 172–3.
5. Alistair Horne, The Seven Ages of Paris (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 241.
6. Virginia Rounding, Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century
Courtesans (New York: Bloomsbury, 2003), 2.
7. Peter Gammond, Offenbach: His Life and Times (London: Omnibus Press, 1980), 37.
8. Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time (New York: Zone Books, 2002),
85.
9. James Harding, Jacques Offenbach: A Biography (London: John Calder, 1980), 89.
10. See Harding, Jacques Offenbach, 155.
11. Jacques Rancière, The Intellectual and His People: Staging the People. (London: Verso, 2012),
Vol. 2, 18.

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 31 French Operetta: Offenbach and Company

12. Author’s translation.

13. Author’s translation.
14. Alexander Faris, Jacques Offenbach (London: Faber & Faber, 1980), 149.
15. Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 285–6, and 288.

Recommended Reading
Burchell, Samuel C. Upstart Empire: Paris During the Brilliant Years of Louis
Napoleon. London: MacDonald, 1971.
Faris, Alexander. Jacques Offenbach. London: Faber & Faber, 1980.
Fenby, Jonathan. France: A Modern History from the Revolution to the War with
Terror. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015.
Gammond, Peter. Offenbach: His Life and Times. Neptune City, NJ: Paganiniana,
1981.
Harding, James. Jacques Offenbach: A Biography. London: John Calder, 1980.
Hussey, Andrew. Paris: The Secret History. New York: Bloomsbury, 2006.
Jones, Colin. Paris: The Biography of a City. New York: Viking 2004.
Kenrick, John. Musical Theatre: A History. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Kirkland, Stephane. Paris Reborn: Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Quest to
Build a Modern City. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013.
Kracauer, Siegfried. Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time. New York: Zone
Books, 2002.

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