OFFENBACH, JACQUES

OFFENBACH, JACQUES (1819–1880), French composer of comic operas and operettas. Born in Cologne, Offenbach was the son of isaac offenbach . At the age of 14 young Jacob, as he was then called, was sent to study the cello at the Paris Conservatoire, but after a year, poverty compelled him to earn his living as a cellist in theater orchestras. He received basic instruction in the art of composition from the composer, Jacques Halévy , and in 1835 took to writing short, sentimental pieces. He attracted attention more because of his eccentric behavior than the quality of his music and his first theatrical works met with little success. They were followed by years of hardship and struggle for recognition. For a time he was a conductor at the Théâtre Français and gradually built a reputation with works such as Pépito (1853) and Oyayayie ou la Reine des Iles (1855). It was the Paris World Fair of 1855 that proved a turning point in Offenbach's career. He obtained the lease of a small theater in the Champs-Elysées and opened it in time for the Fair under the name of Les Bouffes Parisiens. Its success surpassed his expectations. He took Paris by storm with musical plays such as Les Deux Aveugles and Le Violoneux and had to move to a larger theater in the Passage Choiseul. During the ensuing years he wrote about 100 stage works, many of them of enduring brilliance. Among them were Orphée aux Enfers (1858), La Belle Hélène (1864), La Vie Parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), La Périchole (1868), Madame l'Archiduc (1874), and finally his grand opera, Contes d'Hoffmann, which was first performed in 1881. Rossini called Offenbach "our little Mozart of the Champs-Elysées"; others summed him up as "the entertainer (amuseur) of the Second Empire." All Europe sang his melodies and danced to his rhythms. He was not as happy, however, in his business dealings. In spite of profitable tours to Berlin, Prague, Vienna, London, and New York, he was frequently in debt and had to face harassing lawsuits. In about 1844 he converted to Catholicism. After the fall of the Empire in 1870, Offenbach's reputation declined, and during the last few years of his life he was a sick man. He did not live to see his Contes d'Hoffmann on the stage; when he died it existed only in an annotated piano score, on the basis of which E. Guirard made the orchestration. Together with his librettists, particularly Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac, Offenbach created a world of fantasy and joy in which, as the critic karl kraus expressed it, "causality is abolished and everybody lives happily under the laws of chaos…." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Brindejont-Offenbach, Offenbach, mon grandpère (1940); S. Kracauer, Orpheus in Paris: Offenbach and the Paris of his Time (1938); A. Decaux, Offenbach, roi du Second Empire (1958); A. Moss and E. Marvel, Cancan and Barcarolle: the Life and Times of Jacques Offenbach (1954). (Frank Pelleg)