From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jacques Offenbach
(20 June 1819, in
Cologne
? 5 October 1880, in
Paris
) was a
French
composer
and
cellist
of the
Romantic
era. He is seen as one of the originators of the
operetta
form. He was of German-Jewish descent. He was one of the most influential composers of popular music in Europe in the 19th century. Many of his works are still played today.
Offenbach's many
operettas
, such as
Orpheus in the Underworld
, and
La belle Helene
, were extremely popular both in France and elsewhere in the 1850s and 1860s. They combined political and cultural
satire
with witty
grand opera
parodies
. His popularity in France declined in the 1870s after the fall of the
Second Empire
. He fled
France
, but during the last years of his life, his popularity came back. Several of his operettas are still performed. While his name remains most closely associated with the French
operetta
and the
Second Empire
, it is Offenbach's one fully
operatic
masterpiece,
Les contes d'Hoffmann
(
The Tales of Hoffmann
), composed at the end of his career, that has become the most familiar of Offenbach's works in major
opera houses
.