Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach (June 20, 1819 - October 5, 1880), German-French composer, representative works There are operas "The Tales of Hoffmann", operettas "Orfeo in Hell" and "Beautiful Helen".

Offenbach is the founder and outstanding representative of French operetta. For the public, he combined the tradition of stage drama, the form of comic opera, live newspaper performances on Paris boulevards and urban folk songs.

Chinese name: Jacques Offenbach

Foreign name: JacquesOffenbach

Nationality: Germany

Birthplace: Cologne, Germany

Date of birth: June 20, 1819 AD

Date of death: October 5, 1880 AD

Occupation: Musician

Main achievements: the founder and outstanding representative of French operetta

Representative works: the opera "The Tales of Hoffmann", the operettas "Orfeo in Hell" and "The Beautiful Helen"

Gender: Male

Character Experience

Jacques Offenbach was born in Cologne, Germany on June 20, 1819 and died in Paris on October 5, 1880. His father, Ebest, was an untalented musician and synagogue singer. Offenbach learned to play the violin when he was 6 years old. When he was 8 years old, he began composing some short songs and learned to play the cello privately. When he was 11 years old, he often played music with his two brothers at "entertainment music evenings" on Sundays and holidays, sometimes even twice a day. When he was 14 years old, his father took him and his two older brothers to Paris. After Cherubini heard Jacques's cello performance, he went against the rules and admitted him to the Paris Conservatoire (the predecessor of the Paris National Conservatory of Music, the Conservatoire National de Région de Paris). But he only stayed there for a year. From 1835 to 1837, he served as a member of the orchestra at the Opéra Comique. At this time, Offenbach met Arevi and began to take composition lessons from him. The waltzes he composed gave him his first achievements in this field.

Offenbach achieved great success as a cellist with his virtuoso performances in high-society salons. In 1844, Offenbach went to London as a cellist, playing among the city's aristocratic circles and even at the court. On the eve of the 1848 revolution, Offenbach sought refuge in Cologne, where he held concerts, organized a performance, and composed songs for the revolutionary movement that spread to Germany. In 1850, Offenbach became the conductor of the drama orchestra of the Comédie Fran?aise. As early as 1839, a one-act opera by Offenbach was performed, a second part in 1847, and a third part in 1853. In the summer of 1855, Offenbach finally opened his own small theater - the "Parisian Comedy". From then on, he performed many pantomimes, comedies and one-act operas with Ludovic Allévi (1834-1908), nephew of the composer Allévi (1834-1908), and other literary collaborators. In the winter of the same year, the "Comédière de Paris" moved into a larger theater and immediately became one of the most famous theaters in Paris. Meyerbeer, Rossini, Thackeray, Leo Tolstoy and others were all presenters. Theater guests.

Main plays

Orfeo in Hell

The extremely popular story of Orfeo and Euridice in Greek mythology, earlier Monteverdi and Gluck had already written it as an opera, and then Offenbach added extremely light and cheerful music to this script, which is full of wit and woven with social satire. But the most interesting thing is that this play also borrows the melody from Gluck's opera "Orfeo" and other works, and makes various playful "distortions". Usually when this play is performed, it is customary to insert Dialogue that satirizes the times. This operetta is the earliest two-act work written by Offenbach, so it has special significance, but some versions have a four-act structure.

In 1849, Offenbach served as the leader of the French Opera in Paris. In 1855, he owned his own small theater, Bouffes-Parisiens, where he was able to perform his favorite operettas one after another. The most important work is "Orfeo in Hell", which was written in 1858 and premiered at the Bouffes Parisiens Theater in Paris on October 21 of the same year.

Beautiful Helen

This 3-act operetta "Beautiful Helen" was written by Meilhac and Halevy and composed by Offenbach. In 1864, it premiered in Paris on December 17 of that year. The story takes place in Sparta, the era of Greek mythology.

The Tales of Hoffmann

Overview:

The three-act serious opera "The Tales of Hoffmann" is Offenbach's only unfinished opera Later, his confidant Girot (1837-1892) completed the unfinished part and performed it. The work was a great success and is still performed in opera houses all over the world.

In his lifetime, Offenbach wrote about 90 operettas and other stage works. In his later years, although he devoted all his efforts to composing this masterpiece "The Tales of Hoffmann", he unfortunately fell ill due to overwork. Unfortunately, I was not able to witness the success of this show while I was alive.

The most interesting thing about this opera is that the story content of each act is very weird and absurd, and the structure is also very special, which has never been seen before. It takes the form of three fantastic love stories with a prologue and an end.

However, in the Stein version of the score, it is arranged into four acts and five scenes, and the short ending is regarded as the second scene of the fourth act. Since this play was originally composed with the music of "Opera Comique", it is a numbered opera with narration added, just like Bizet's "Carmen". But later Giraud changed these parts into recitative, and now everyone is familiar with the revised style.

The theme of this play is selected from the play "Hoffmann's Fantasy Stories" (five acts) that premiered at the Odeon Theater in Paris in 1851. It was written by Barbier (1822-1901) and Carré (1819-1872) based on the German romantic writer E.T.A. Several novels by Hoffmann (1776-1822) were adapted from the theme of searching for freedom. In order to write this drama into an opera, Offenbach urged his already sick body to immerse himself in composing music. After changing several plots of the original play, it was rewritten into an opera script

Offenbach's music not only retains the weirdness of the original work, but also fully reveals the composer's light style and has a somewhat fantasy atmosphere. The play is filled with rich melodies, especially the popular "Barcarolle", which is often separated from the original opera and is sung everywhere or performed in various arrangements.

The original author of the novel E. T.A. Hoffmann showed extraordinary talents in music and painting since childhood. He also wrote a lot of music and dabbled in opera. Because Hoffman liked to write dreamy and weird literary and artistic works, he was regarded as a devil or a monster during his lifetime, or was accused of being the incarnation of the devil.

Just as this opera is included in the "Fantasy Opera", the plot connects three fantastic stories. Because the music is beautiful, it actually becomes a rather enjoyable popular opera.

Performance time: Prologue: 25 minutes Act 1: 38 minutes Act 2: 27 minutes Act 3: 40 minutes End act: 14 minutes

Time: 19th century

Location: In Nuremberg, Munich, Venice.

Evaluation of the work

Offenbach's initial stage works were not successful. In 1858, the operetta "Orfeo in Hell" was very popular. After more than 200 performances, this work was given a grand performance in a large theater for Napoleon III. Later, he wrote a series of operettas, which were all very successful, such as "Beautiful Helen" (1864), "La Vie de Paris" (1866), "The Duchess of Groshtan" (1867), etc. In his later years, he planned to write an opera "The Tales of Hoffmann", but he died before it was completed. It was later composed by E. Giro is done.

His tunes run through popular folk sentiments, and widely adopt the rhythms of life dances, such as waltz, galop and cancan. His operettas are full of ridicule and satire, but they also cater to the tastes of the powerful, are highly entertaining, and even have erotic expressions. Duality is also the reason why his art can exist in the Second Empire. Offenbach's music has great influence on the Austrian F. Su Pei, J. Strauss, A. Sullivan, F. of Hungary. Lehar as well as modern American musicals are influential.