Happy 200th birthday, Jacques Offenbach (1819 – 1880)!
Satire works brilliantly in opera. Offenbach used classical allusions to get at Emperor Napoleon III and the ruling classes. "I want the audience to laugh," he wrote, "not about harmless trifles but about the fact that important dangerous matters can be overcome." They did. Even Napoleon’s court laughed, though several of Offenbach’s most successful operettas ridiculed them indirectly. (Jupiter, in Orpheus gets to Eurydice by turning into a beautiful fly, singing a love duet with her where his part consists entirely of buzzing ("Listen to Natalie Dessay dealing with the fly: "Duo de la mouche"). Emperor Napoleon had a coat of arms with a bee.
But it’s not just political satire. Debussy wrote that the musical establishment could not cope with Offenbach's irony, which exposed the "false, overblown quality" of the operas they favoured – "the great art at which one was not allowed to smile". Credited with bringing operetta into its prime on the world's stages, he influencing Johann Strauss II, Lehár and yes, Sullivan. No surprise that Sullivan loved this stuff. Both delighted in satire, and for both it was possible in societies encouraging social commentary and the exposing of ruling class foibles. Both brilliantly matched music to witty, establishment-mocking librettos.
Music to love. Offenbach is known by his big hit tunes.
Everyone knows the cancan – it appeared as the Galop Infernal in Orpheus in the Underworld. The dance had been around in naughty places for 25 years, and the Galop actually was music for hell – when Euridice decides it’s more fun there than above. Here’s Natalie Dessay saying so!) It’s most often performed out of context now. (Compare the music when the dance cancan returned to operetta with Lehar’s Merry Widow – epitomising the difference between Maxim’s and the palaces of high society.)
Then there’s the "Barcarolle" from Tales of Hoffmann, his last, unfinished opera, “Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour". Here's your pleasure listening for the week – two of the great women of opera in our time, Anna Netrebko & Elina Garanca sing one of the most beautiful and complex duets for two women. (This plot is also highly complex!)
And of course, there are the waltzes. And the sweet hummable tunes. Take time to listen to the overture from Orpheus.
We are watching La belle Hélène, his 1864 triumph, which has the satire (again, mocking the elite as portrayed as the Greek kings from the Iliad - Agamemnon and his mates) and also the hit tunes.
There’s the wonderful tenor aria giving Paris’s account of his judgement of the three goddesses – take time for a tenor tasting!! Here’s Juan Diego Florez. And here’s an early Jussi Björling, much more serious, but O the high C! And here, in our production, is French tenor Yann Beuron.
Then there's the ridiculous duet in which Paris persuades Helen she’s dreaming that he is seducing her: love those sheep!
Here’s the whole first Act of our production.
And here’s a spoiler – but then, you knew the happy ending.
Our message for the times: believe that "important dangerous matters can be overcome."
