Offenbach, Jacques

Offenbach, Jacques (1819-1880), French composer, whose operettas satirized the politics and foibles of Napoleon III's Second Empire. Born in Cologne, Germany, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire and in 1837 became a cellist at the Paris Opéra-Comique, where his first operetta, the one-act Pepito, was performed in 1853. In 1849 he became conductor at the Théâtre Français. Subsequently he managed the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre (1855-1861) and the Théâtre de la Gaité (1873-1875). By 1875 he had composed 90 operettas, many of them to librettos by the French writer Ludovic Halévy. Of Offenbach's works, the most often performed today are Orpheus in the Underworld (1858) with its famous Can-can, La Périchole (1868), and his serious lyric opera The Tales of Hoffmann (1880, premiered posthumously, 1881), which contains the popular “Barcarolle”. Offenbach's musical style is prevailingly witty and light. Through his operettas (a term which he coined for La Rose de St-Flour in 1856) the genre became established internationally, and Offenbach's lead was followed by Johann Strauss the younger, Arthur Sullivan and Lehar, and ultimately by the 20th-century musical.