Offenbach: Orpheus in the Underworld

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.”