FILLED WITH MIRTH

What a fascinating fellow was Jacques Offenbach! He was born in Cologne in 1819, the son of a cantor at a synagogue in that city, and he died in Paris in 1880. In the years between, he virtually invented French comic opera and contributed some of the most delightful scores in the entire panoply of Western vocal music. Wagner hated every note; Rossini called him the “Mozart of the Champs d’Elysées.”

Offenbach started his musical career by going to Paris to study the cello, but after a year he gave up his lessons and joined the orchestra of the Opéra-Comique. There the lilting strains and lively rhythms of light opera caught his fancy. His early compositions were pieces for cello and piano and some chansonettes on parodies of the poems of La Fontaine. In 1849 he became the conductor of the Theatre Francais orchestra and wrote his first hit, a “Chanson de Fortunio” for the production of Alfred de Musset's Chandelier. His first one-act operetta, Pépito, was something of a flop in 1853; but nothing could discourage Offenbach. In 1855 he opened his own theater, the Bouffes-Parisiens, and kept it going until 1866. He wrote one sparkling comic opera after another, simply borrowing from himself whenever he ran out of “ musical ideas; when he died he had all but completed his one truly serious effort, his) masterpiece The Tales of Hoffmann.

In 1858, when Offenbach set about composing Orpheus in Hades, the most ambitious satirical musical work he had yet undertaken, what his librettists, Hector Cremieux and Ludovic Halévy, had in mind was a takeoff on the Orpheus legend that would make a mockery of all that was absurd in the France of the Second Empire. Jupiter was to be a caricature of Napoleon. General Boum was based on Bismarck. Offenbach himself in his score slipped in parodies of the music of Gluck, Meyerbeer, and Donizetti. Nobody pays attention to these aspects of Orpheus in Hades now; its humor really stands alone, and it is amusing enough when the gods sing the Marseillaise and dance the cancan.

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is acually turned inside out and upside down. It seems Eurydice has been having an affair with a fellow who claims to be a beekeeper named Aristaeus. He isn't really Aristaeus at all, but Pluto in disguise. Pluto takes Eurydice down to his love nest in the Underworld. Orpheus (a violin teacher in this version), far from being upset about Eurydice's absence, is delighted. But Jupiter is annoyed—because he would like to have Eurydice for himself. At one point he turns himself into a fly to go through a keyhole and be near her. Orpheus has to go back down to get her; and the gods on Olympus, bored with a steady diet of nectar and ambrosia, agree to go down and help get her back. So, while a Greek chorus named Public Opinion serves up a running commentary, everybody winds up in pursuit of Eurydice, who would really prefer to stay in Hades with Pluto. The big moment, of course, comes when the gods dance the cancan and fill the stage with mirth and merriment.

This MHS release is a recording of highlights from Orpheus in the Underworld, based on the English National Opera production with an English text written by Snoo Wilson and David Pountney. Indeed, performing this opera in English is nothing new. It was first offered in Paris in 1858; only seven years later an English language version was given at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. In any event, in this exhilarating interpretation, the score sounds as fresh now as when Offenbach completed it.