Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 3, No. 7 (1929-04)

April, 1929 The Phonograph Monthly Review 225 Offenbach and Opera-Bouffe By JAMES HADLEY T HE case of M. Jacques Offenbach is, probably, with- out a parallel in the history of music, inasmuch as he is chiefly known in our opera houses by the one work that is least typical of his art and his philosophy. This opera, “The Tales of Hoffmann,” was Offenbach’s swan-song, and achieved his supreme ambition to compose an opera that should be presented at the Opera-Comique. This hope was realized, with a brilliant and lasting success, not only at the Comique, but in all the opera-houses of the world, as well. It is one of the great tragedies of life that the composer never lived to see his work given upon the stage. As he neared life’s end, the“Tales” were far from being completed, so, from his death-bed, he instructed his bossom-friend, Ernest Guiraud, in the numberless details connected with the finishing of the score, a task which the younger man had loyally undertaken. So, from the sketches and plans of the opera—often no more than a single phrase, or a few measures—“Les Contes d’ Hoffmann” was finished, revised, and partly orchestrated by Guiraud, and with what splendid results, all the world knows. No better man than Guiraud could conceivably be imagined to complete the dying composer’s masterpiece, for the talent of the younger musician is distinguished by that elegance and charm that is essentially French. He is, him- self, a composer of many beautiful things. Especially notice- able is the opera-comique, “Piccolino,” full of delightful sur- prises. In lighter vein, but no less admirable, is the exotic and alluring “Danse Persane”—a great favorite on concert programmes—and the bewitching “Valse du Colin-Maillard,” picturesque, full of colour, and scored with great brilliancy, from his ballet, “Gretna-green.” These two airs-de-ballet, are worthy the magic pen of Delibes. As has been said, however, “The Tales of Hoffmann” is not a work that is in the least characteristic of its composer. Full of beauties as it is, one sees everywhere that the larger art-form was an unfamiliar territory, in which he stepped with caution. The music is written well for the voice, and demands singers of the first rank. Incidentally, the role of “Hoffmann” is, with one exception. (Arturo, in Bellini’s “Puritani”) the highest ever written for a tenor, and fortunate indeed is that gifted singer who can with ease negotiate the terrific passages in “Ah! Vivre Deux”, and “0 Dieu de quelle Ivresse.” The real Offenbach was the genius of musical caricature. In this field he is supreme. He is in fact, the only composer of this type to whom the term “man of genius” can be properly applied. He was the musical prophet of his period— the Second Empire—the gayety, frivolity, and immorality of which he faithfully reflected in his musical pieces. The fact that these operettas, of an essentially cynical, risque and irreverent character, were the works of a Jewish cantor’s son, was a paradox that seemed only to make them even more a part of that Prince of Paradox, Jacques Offenbach, himself. No one would have laughed more heartily than he at the absurd incongruity of such a combination. It would have been only one more conceit that elbowed its way insolently through the land of musical topsy-turveydom, where all things that tradition had held sacred were material for his ridicule. The beginnings of his extraordinary career were not sensa- tional. Offenbach came to Paris in 1833, saw the “City of Light” and was conquered. After an irksome period of study in the Conservatoire, he found a position as ’cellist in the orchestra of the Opera-Comique. Here he learned much; no Levantine tradesman ever had a keener eye for any trifle that might be of use to him. For five years, he was later bound to routine and respectability, as conductor of the Theatre-Francais. It was with real appreciation that he directed the players in the music of Gluck, Haydn and Mozart, but in his soul he chafed at the stilted formality and the “grand manner”, the tragic stride and the wavering plumes of Racine and Corneille. At this time he composed many pieces, but they were refused. “Fortunio’s Song”, an in- spiration of rare charm, was not accepted at the Comedie- Frangaise. He wrote opera after opera, and always without success; the managers appeared to have hearts of stone. Finally, staking his all on a chance, the young composer set up a little theatre of his own in the Champs Elysees, where he brought out many one-act musical pieces written by himself. This was in the year of the International Exhibition of 1855. These musical miniatures were irrisistibly amusing, effervescent as champagne, and he soon won the approval of the public. It was not long before a larger playhouse was found to be necessary, so the young impresario transferred his growing theatrical family to the Theatre Conite, which he re-named the “Theatre des Bouffes-Parisiens,” in the Passage Choiseul, where he set Paris mad with the triumph and the scandal of “Orphee aux Enfers,” his best and most characteris- tic work. This bon-bon box of a theatre became the rage of Paris. Not to have been seen there was to argue oneself unknown, its ceiling was decorated by a painter unknown to fame, but with a flamboyant sense for color and a great technical facility—a pupil of Baldry—with groups of mythological figures in each of the four great oval panels. In his direc- tions to the painter Offenbach had said very impressively:— “No avenging deities shall disfigure the ceiling of my theatre . .. far rather shall my friends be charmed and exhilarated by visions of the amiable weaknesses of the gods—those heavenly condecensions that bring them so near to our sympathy and comprehension.” Accordingly, in golden and satiny whites; magnificent, flower-like reds; marvellous blues, ranging from palest turquoise to deepest cerulean, and rich cinnamon browns, there bloomed those adorably indiscreet decorations, . . . Venus and Adonis; Leda and the Swan; Apollo and Daphne, and the sleeping Endymion visited by the goddess Diana. From this period—about 1860r—date his most famous works, and it was with these witty and suggestive travesties that Offenbach really founded that peculiar species of musico-dra- matic art known as “opera-bouffe.” These works, the genuine operas-bouffes, are those in which the characters are taken from mythology, history and poetry, and are presented under ridiculous aspects. Offenbach’s Orphee aux Enfers” and “La Belle Helene”, and HervS’s “Le petit Faust”—a shameless travesty in Gounod’s great opera — may be cited as ex- amples. Where the plot and the dramatis personae are entirely imaginary, as in “La Fille de Madame Angot” by Lecocq, no one is burlesqued, and instead of opera-bouffe we have comic-opera. The line of demarcation is, however, difficult to draw with any degree of accuracy: “Madame Angot” is often classified as opera-bouffe, and as such it will be considered here. Says one famous writer:—“It was the result of an endeavor to catch the essence of the popular taste of the day; the extravagance, the license, the cynicism, and moral emptiness of the Second Empire.” The success of these operettas was enormous—their vogue incredible. What especially appealed to the French taste was the truly devilish ingenuity of his musical caricatures. Nothing escaped his irreverent touch. Everything that Art and Poetry and Tradition had revered was now led up to his distorting mirror, and the world was invited to roar with laughter at the grotesque reflection. In “Orphee aux Enfers”, (Orpheus in the Underworld) he burlesqued the antique world of the Grecian gods. His best music is to be found in this absurd perversion, where Orpheus, one of the most beautiful and poetic figures in Grecian mythology, is here transformed into a violin-teacher giving; private lessons. In this piece we witness a mad carnival of the gods, Olympus dragged through the mire, and a whole age of poetry scoffed at. The opera ends with a capricious and grandiose Finale—a furious allegro—in which, as a French writer has said:—“Gayety goes farther than insolence—to the very doors of insult and