Opera Books

French Music in
the XIXth Century

By

Arthur Hervey

CHAPTER VIII

OFFENBACH AND THE OPERA BOUFFE

DURING the ‘forties, a young native of Cologne played the violoncello in the orchestra of the Paris Opéra Comique. Later on he became chef d’orchestre at the Théâtre Français, where he remained five years. The name of the young musician was Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), a name which was soon to he famous all the world over.
    It was in the year 1855 that Offenbach became director of a small theatre in the Champs Elysées and seriously commenced his career as a purveyor of light operatic music. The word seriously is not altogether out of place, as at that time Offenbach held very exalted views as regards the art of music. These views he put into print, for it may not be generally known that the composer of Orphée aux Enfers and La Belle Hélène having first been an instrumentalist, then a conductor, for a time turned his attention to musical criticism.
     His articles read very well and the opinions expressed therein would command unqualified approval at the present day. He shows himself in these uncompromisingly hostile towards those composers who write down to the level of the public, and severely condemns what he terms "mercantile music." He lauds Mozart and Weber to the skies, and, what is more curious, he writes enthusiastically about Berlioz. Offenbach the champion of Berlioz!
     These articles were written just before he assumed the direction of his little theatre in the Champs Elysées, when he necessarily had to lay down the pen of the critic. The pieces performed here were mostly short operettas, and it may serve to give an idea of Offenbach’s activity to state that in the space of twelve months he had produced twenty-nine pieces in one act, thirteen of which were by himself.
     He now migrated to another theatre, the Bouffes Parisiens, and it was here that his first really great success was obtained with Orphée aux Enfers in 1858.
    From that time until his death, Offenbach never ceased writing, multiplying his scores with wondrous rapidity. Many of these awake pleasant memories : La Belle Hélène, Barbe Bleue, La Grande Duchesse de Gérolsteirin, La Périchole, Les Brigands, Geneviève de Brabant, La Princesse de Trébizonde, La Jolie Parfumeuse, Madame Favart—to name some of the best at random.
     Offenbach not only contributed to the gaiety of the world, for which he deserves eternal gratitude, but he also played an important part in the history of music as I will endeavour to show. Before doing so, however, it is well to point out that Offenbach was not altogether satisfied with his position as the accredited purveyor of music for the masses. The influences of his childhood spent at Cologne, the aspirations of his youth, exemplified in the writings alluded to above, were destined to assert themselves and to haunt the mind of the much-adulated musician, who might well have been intoxicated by the triumphs he obtained with such apparent ease. He however cherished the ambition of proving that he was able to write something better, and he wished to be taken au sérieux, at any rate occasionally.
     Thus did his name appear at intervals on the bills of the Opéra Comique, with Barkouf, then with Robinson Crusoe, and Vert- Vert, and finally with Les Contes d’Hoffmann, his swan song. In the above works he appears not as the musical humorist of Orphée, but rather as a follower of Auber, Adam, and those composers who for so many years illustrated this peculiarly Gallic form of operatic art.
     It was, however, rather too late to attempt to rejuvenate a style which was already passé, and Offenbach by creating the "opéra bouffe" had himself dealt a hard blow at the operatic forms of the period. Henceforth there were to be only two ways open to dramatic composers, the one leading to the " lyrical drama," the other to the" opérette." For some years afterwards many musicians of talent attempted a compromise, but gradually it has been proved that their efforts were vain.
     "Happy is the man who is born excellent in the pursuit in vogue, and whose genius seems adapted to the time he lives in."
     These words of Oliver Goldsmith are applicable to Offenbach who, by chance or ingenuity, succeeded in turning his talents to the best account, in this way resembling his countryman, the composer of Les Huguenots. By a curious irony of fate, however, Offenbach was one of those who were destined actively to discredit the forms of the Grand Opéra, of which Meyerbeer was the high priest.
     The Voltairean spirit of satire finds a readyappreciation in France, where ridicule kills more quickly than anything, and Offenbach’s collaborators are evidently en titled to share with the composer a goodly part of the success achieved, just as in the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas the author and the musician are inseparably connected. Yet who thinks of Offenbach’s librettists?
     Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy are the authors of Orphée. The latter afterwards collaborated with Meilhac in La Belle Hélène, Barbe Bleue, and La Grande Duchesse amongst others.
     Mr. Augustine Birrell, in one of his essays, talks of our passion for generalisation, saying that "we all of us have long ago endowed each one of the Christian centuries (to wander back no further) with its own characteristics and attributes. These arbitrary divisions of time have thus become sober realities ; they stalk majestically across the stage of memory, they tread the boards each in its own garb, making appropriate gestures and uttering familiar catch words." Certainly each century has its peculiar characteristics. Time can even be subdivided into yet smaller sections, for each decade differs from another in its main attributes. If this is applicable to things in general, it is particularly so to art, music and literature. What, for instance, can be more characteristic of the period of the Second Empire than the light, witty and cynical "opéra bouffe" which Offenbach set to such effervescing strains? That period of transition when a spirit of easygoing scepticism, a reflex of the Voltaireanism of the preceding century, seemed to permeate society! When everything was approached with a light heart, possibly in order to hide any feelings of disquietude caused by the instability of the régime.
     It was a moment when great changes were evolving in the world of thought. Old ideas were giving place to new ones. The orthodox were scandalised at the boldness of a Renan and, without having read his works, anathematised his opinions, for the prevailing scepticism was cloaked in the garb of religion. The Caesarism of the day, based on a democratic foundation, fostered freedom of opinion and encouraged a spirit of levity. The moment was ripe for the parodist to look around for subjects on which to exercise the shafts of his wit.
     The Olympian gods lent themselves readily to the purpose, and thus in Orphée aux Enfers the mighty Jove figured as "Papa ’piter," and Pluto in a disguise made love to Eurydice, who had another suitor in the person of one John Styx, described, for the sake of an atrocious pun, as domestyx to the deity of the nether world. In La Belle Hélène it was the turn of Homeric heroes, Paris, Menelaus, Agamemnon and Achilles.
     Later on the vivacious Cologne musician and his librettists poked their fun, at the small German courts with their old-fashioned étiquette, and La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein drew all the royal notabilities present in Paris for the Exhibition of 1867 to the Théâtre des Variétés, where Mme. Hortense Schneider reigned supreme. It is t that one day this favourite actress was about to enter some enclosure reserved for the Imperial circle when she was stopped by a zealous functionary. "Mais je suis la Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein," was her prompt remark, to which the reply came, "C’est bien, passez, Madame."
     These were bright, joyous days when there was no foreboding of the débâcle and the sorrows of l’année terrible. Offenbach gave the public what they wanted and, with a rapidity which seems veritably prodigious, produced work after work in quick succession.
     If the public showered favours on Offenbach, the musicians on the contrary loaded him with abuse. Wagner and Offenbach were at this time the two most decried composers, for diametrically opposite reasons. Those who clung to the past noted with terror the approaching decline and fall of the older operatic style. They vaguely feared the revolutionary theories of Wagner, and when Offenbach proceeded to turn everything they held sacred into ridicule, they became still more alarmed. Writers like the fatuous Clément cloaked themselves in the garb of outraged virtue, and posing as the guardians of classical art, uttered solemn warnings.
     There exist individuals who are incapable of appreciating any but the most serious music. These are terribly aggravating people, the Peck-sniffs of the art, who assume irritating airs of superiority and remain perched on their imaginary pedestals, posing as musical Simeon Stylites doing penance to atone for the errors of those benighted ones who are capable of enjoying music of every description provided it be good of its kind. Brahms is about the only modern composer who is recognised by these sham aristarchs of taste. It is not to such as these, therefore, that the following remarks will appeal. They would be incapable of appreciating the talent that pervades the works of Offenbach. To take one of the most famous of the composer’s scores, La Belle Hélène, as an example, one is astonished at the extraordinary tunefulness, the wonderful entrain which never flags, the peculiar sense of humour, the real originality displayed in its pages. Surely qualities such as these are not to be discovered at every street corner. About the tunefulness and entrain of Offenbach’s music there has never been any question. His originality is also patent to most.
     For his humorous effects he often adopted curious devices, such as repeating and accentuating the last syllable of a word.
     A well-known instance of this occurs in the first act of La Belle Hélène, when the kings of Greece make their appearance:

          Ces rois remplis de vaillance, ‘pus de vaillance, ’plis do vaillance,
          C’est les deux Ajax, les deux, les deux Ajax,
          Etalant avec jactance, t’avec jactance, t’avec jactance,
          Leur double thorax, leur dou double thorax.

La Belle Hélène abounds in the most amusing skits on the old Italian and the Grand Opéra styles. The patriotic trio in the last act is a parody of the famous trio in Guillaume Tell. Considering the great esteem in which Rossini’s opera was held at the time in Paris, the musician’s daring may well seem remarkable. Nowhere has Offenbach shown his talent as a melodist to greater advantage than in La Belle Hélène. Such airs as "Au mont Ida," and "Amour divin" possess real charm.
     Offenbach was, of course, destined to have followers in the path be had traced, and of these Hervé, the composer of L’OEil crevé, Chilpéric and similar musical buffooneries,was the most successful. After the war of 1870 the taste of the public appeared to undergo a change, and the "opérette," which seemed to combine certain characteristics of the " opéra bouffe " and of the older " opera comique" came into vogue.
     Lecocq’s La Fille de Mme. Angot, a charming work in its way, accentuated the new departure. Then came Litolff, a musician of very superior gifts, with Héloïse et A bélard, and later on Planquette with Les Cloches de Corneville.
     Offenbach himself followed suit with La Jolie Parfumeuse and Madame Favart.
     The vogue enjoyed by Offenbach’s works in Vienna possibly stimulated Franz von Suppé to write some of his merry operettas, and Johann Strauss to compete with him in the same field. In England the typically national Savoy operas may be said to owe something to Offenbach and his collaborators. Was not Sullivan once dubbed the "English Offenbach" by an indignant musician of the old school? The epithet was not applied in a flattering sense, and yet it was, in a way, a compliment, for after all Sullivan in his light works was doing for London precisely what Offenbach had done for Paris. The methods might differ in many ways, but the objects were identical. Both composers possessed a rare sense of humour, and employed it for the glorification of topsy-turvydom.
     Offenbach was not by any means the consummate musical mountebank he is depicted. His works often disclose great delicacy of touch, and some of his melodies, like the lovely Chanson de Fortunio, reveal true sensibility.
     Of late years many operettas have been brought out in Paris, but these need not detain us further. The genre is too unimportant to justify a lengthy disquisition in these pages. It would have been impossible, however, to pass over in silence the composer concerning whom Victorin Joncières once wrote : "Offenbach a pu écrire de la petite musique, mais c’était un grand artiste."

Last updated October 21, 2006