Jacques Offenbach

“ Our contemporaneous composers forget that Mozart, Beethoven and Sebastian Bach knew how to laugh at times. They distrust all gaiety and declare it unesthetic. As the good public cannot resign itself to getting along without gaiety, it goes to operetta and turns naturally to Offenbach who created it and furnished an inexhaustible supply. My phrase is not exaggerated, for Offenbach hardly dreamed of creating an art. He was endowed with a genius for the comic and an abundance of melody, but he had no thought of doing anything beyond providing material for the theatre he managed at the time. ”

“ As an indication of this, he dared to write in his advice to young musicians:
“Those who have genius will make opéra-comique like mine; those who have talent will write opera like Gluck’s; while those who have neither genius nor talent, will write symphonies like Haydn’s.”
However, he tried to make an opera like Gluck’s and in spite of his great efforts and his interesting inventions, he could not equal the work of his formidable rival.
Although he was not a great musician, Offenbach had a surprising natural instinct and made here and there curious discoveries in harmony. ”

“ From this time forward the success of Offenbach’s pieces became an absolute certainty, and the new form of opéra bouffe, which he had gradually endowed with as much consistency as it was capable of assuming, was accepted as the only one worth cultivating. It found imitators in Lecocq and other aspirants of a younger generation, and Offenbach’s works found their way to every town in Europe in which a theatre existed. Tuneful, gay and exhilarating, their want of refinement formed no obstacle to their popularity, and perhaps even contributed to it. ”

“ Offenbach was destined not to be appreciated as a serious composer, though in one of his works, the little-known Contes d'Hoffmann, there is much music which, if not learned or profound, is at least artistic. ”

“ No one is likely to listen to the trio at the culmination of the third act (that dealing with the fate of a singer's daughter) without realizing what a really admirable power of expression was that which Offenbach, for reasons explained by the spirit of the times and his own moral nature, chose to squander so many years on his opéras bouffes. Frequently the melodic line in the opera rises to admirable heights; always melody, harmony, and orchestration are refined, unless a burlesque effect is aimed at, as in the ballad of "Kleinzack," and Nicklausse's song of the doll. ”

“ Two dance episodes from The Tales of Hoffmann are also frequently performed outside the opera house. One is the infectious waltz which rises to a dramatic climax in the first act. To this music Hoffmann dances with the mechanical doll, Olympia, with whom he is in love. The second is an enchanting little Minuet, used as entr’acte music between the first and second acts.
A collation of some of Offenbach’s most famous melodies from various operettas can be found in La Gaieté parisienne, an orchestral suite adapted from a score by Manuel Rosenthal to a famous contemporary ballet. ”

“ The heart of the overture is the second main melody, a sentimental song first heard in solo violin, and later repeated by full orchestra.
The Can-Can music in Orpheus in the Underworld is also famous. Much of its effect is due to the fact that Offenbach presented the can-can immediately after a stately minuet in order to emphasize the contrast between two periods in French history. A contemporary described this Can-Can music as follows: “This famous dance ... has carried away our entire generation as would a tempestuous whirlwind. ”

“ The modern stage, too, brings evidence that a palpitant tableau is more appreciated than a polished comedy, and the concert-hall tells a story which is not dissimilar. Music, which with Mozart changed its sex, has been turned into a harlot by Offenbach and his successors ”

“ The very same feeling which induced my Parisian ballet-master to rest content with the most vapid pas of Maenads and Bacchantes, forbids our elegant, new-fangled conductors to cut the traces of their "culture." They are afraid such a thing might lead to a scandal a la Offenbach. Meyerbeer was a warning to them; the Parisian opera had tempted him into certain ambiguous Semitic accentuations in music, which fairly scared the "men of culture." ”

“ If by artistic genius we understand the most consummate freedom within the law, divine ease, and facility in overcoming the greatest [Pg 271] difficulties, then Offenbach has even more right to the title genius than Wagner has. Wagner is heavy and clumsy: nothing is more foreign to him than the moments of wanton perfection which this clown Offenbach achieves as many as five times, six times, in nearly every one of his buffooneries. But by genius we ought perhaps to understand something else. ”

“ The most interesting building in the town is the Renaissance chateau of the counts of Isenburg. Offenbach is the principal industrial town of the duchy, and its manufactures are of the most varied description. Its characteristic industry, however, is the manufacture of portfolios, pocket-books, albums and other fancy goods in leather. The earliest mention of Offenbach is in a document of 970. ”

“ It was not for Tosteés singing, which was but a little thing in itself; it was not for her beauty, for that was no more than a reminiscence, if it was not always an illusion; was it because she rendered the spirit of M. Offenbach's operas so perfectly, that we liked her so much? “Ah, that movement!” cried an enthusiast, “that swing, that—that—wriggle!” She was undoubtedly a great actress, full of subtle surprises, and with an audacious appearance of unconsciousness in those exigencies where consciousness would summon the police—or should ”

“ The melody was taken from one of the airs in Offenbach’s operetta, Geneviève de Brabant.
Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers) is Offenbach’s masterwork, first produced in Paris on October 21, 1858. This delightful comic opera, with book by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy, is a satire on the Olympian gods in general, and specifically on the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus in the Underworld was not at first successful since audiences did not seem to find much mirth in a satire on Olympian gods. ”

“ In Vienna Johann Strauss with his waltzes, and the most perfect comic opera of its kind, Die Fledermaus (The Bat) still sparkling and delightful, Zigeuner-Baron (Gypsy-Baron) , all owe their start in life to Offenbach’s genius. We too, in America, have had the gifted Victor Herbert with his Mlle. Modiste, The Serenade, The Red Mill and many other lovely operettas and Reginald De Koven with Robin Hood. The inimitable pair in England, Sir Arthur Sullivan and his librettist W. S. Gilbert, wrote comic operas that have become classics. ”

“ If the Tales of Hoffman shows traces of a practised pen, it is because Guiraud finished the score and went out of his way to remedy some of the author’s mistakes. Leaving aside the bad prosody and the minor defects in taste, we have left a work which shows a wealth of invention, melody, and sparkling fancy comparable to Grétry’s.
Grétry was no more a great musician than Offenbach, for he also wrote badly. The essential difference between the two was the care, not only in his prosody but also in his declamation, which Grétry tried to reproduce musically with all possible exactness. ”

“ And that's why this stage princess as you choose to call her, is too high for Offenbach, and, indeed, perfectly capable of interpreting Mozart and the other great masters."
"And if you succeed, do you really believe that this rescued soul will be made any happier?"
"Who can tell? I merely do what lies in my power. Happy! If music alone could give happiness, few would possess such joy as mine. But it's only a substitute, perhaps the most powerful and noble, but not the real thing, not happiness itself. ”

“ You may so damage a piano as to render it incapable of being properly played on—you may get from it the incoherent janglings of insanity, without affecting our belief in the existence of a real musician behind these unintelligible manifestations. But how if it can be shown that certain mechanical alterations will result, not in nonsense but, let us say, in bringing out mere Offenbach when the performer has always hitherto been wont to play Beethoven? ”

“ Offenbach, of opera-bouffe notoriety, almost lived on coffee while creating his dainty aerial music. The writer of these pages met this composer in Paris in 1873, when he was at the height of his popularity, and was told by him that he took no wine or spirit until after his work of composition was completed. Cimarosa, the Italian composer, who won national fame before he was twenty-five, derived his inspiration from the noisy crowd. Auber, the French composer, could write only among the green fields and the silence of the country. ”

“ After luncheon, when they were smoking (all of us together, no one went into the smoking-room) , he and Hatzfeldt began talking about the Empire and the beautiful fêtes at Compiègne, where anybody of any distinction in any branch of art or literature was invited. Hatzfeldt led the conversation to some evenings when Strauss played his waltzes with an entrain, a sentiment that no one else has ever attained, and to Offenbach and his melodies—one evening particularly when he had improvised a song for the Empress—he couldn't quite remember it. If there were a piano—he looked about. ”

“ On a bend of the Lower Main lies the ancient town of Seligenstadt. It appears to be but a short walk from Offenbach, as the road thence to it appears on the map as the chord to which the arc is formed by the river; and distant but some ten minutes by rail from Frankfort is Offenbach, a thriving, industrious place, whose prosperity was caused by the Huguenot immigration. The road from Offenbach to Seligenstadt is monotonous enough, cutting through dense pine-forests in straight lines, so that a person or carriage approaching is seen for half an hour before he or it is met. ”

“ Renaud and Dalmorès were admirably fitted with parts and scant justice done to the opera in the distribution of the women's rôles; but the charm of Offenbach's music overcame the defects of performance, and the opera achieved so pronounced a success that it could be given with profit eleven times before M. Renaud's departure from New York after the performance of February 4th.
The libretto of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" proclaims a phase of French literary taste which made heroes two generations ago out of two foreign romancers,—the German E. T. A. Hoffmann and the American Edgar Allan Poe. ”

“ In 1874 he managed three opéra bouffe and operetta companies, besides Adelaide Ristori, and became lessee of the Lyceum Theater, in Fourteenth Street. There was a season of financial stress, and in 1875 he severed his connection with Chizzola, after another period of bad luck. In 1876 he gave concerts, directed by Offenbach, in the Madison Square Garden, which were a failure, but he recouped his losses from a forfeit of $20,000, which the Italian Rossi paid to him rather than give up a successful season in Paris. ”

“ He was the son of a rich peasant of Osthofen, and to the astonishment of his father refused to give up the musical profession. He was particularly anxious to introduce me to his parent, that I might influence the old man's mind in favour of his son's choice of an artistic career. This involved me in excursions into their district, and I had an opportunity of witnessing young Weisheimer's talent as an orchestral conductor at a performance of Offenbach's Orpheus in the theatre at Mayence, where he had hitherto occupied a subordinate position. ”

“ ERK, Ludwig Christian, born Jan. 6, 1807, at Wetzlar, where his father was cathedral organist; has rendered very important services to German popular music. He studied music under his father and André of Offenbach, receiving his general education from Spiess, a well-known teacher at Frankfort. Here he remained for some years enjoying the society of the best Darmstadt musicians. In 1826 he was appointed professor at the teachers' seminary at Moers on the Lower Rhine, and it was here that his connection with popular music began. ”

“ The gifted Mr. Oppenheim handles this thrilling episode in the adventures of a master criminal with his usual skill, The story is told, at the outset, by the criminal himself, Michael Sayers.
FOR many months after my somewhat ingenious escape from the café of Madame Ponadour in the Maritime Quartier of Marseilles, I lived in the Forêt du Dom, on the far side of Hyères, the life of a dog. There were three of us woodmen in the hut—Pierre, Jacques and myself. ”

“ IN Schiller's he was a hero. Nearly every night the same tables were occupied by the same people. There was the Herr Doctor, who liked Offenbach and thereby won high regard from the orchestra. There was the delicatessen man, who had grown rich and was assertive that Wagner was far greater than Beethoven. There was “Der Brofessor,” who frequently gladdened the heart of Herr Schmidt by asking him to play a piano solo, “A very small one, blease, from der greatest of musicians, Chopin.” All the younger guests were riffraff who didn't count and asked for the most ridiculous selections. ”