Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach (1819–80) ranks among the greatest composers of lighthearted operettas, and his famous songs continue to charm millions who know neither their names nor their composer. This volume features the sheet music for 38 popular songs from 14 operettas. All are reproduced from the original sheet music - a few from the original piano-vocal scores, and some with lively pictorial covers. Contents include four songs from Orpheé aux enfers...

Un mari à la porte ( A Husband at the Door) is a one-act operetta which was recorded at the Teatro del Maggio in occasion of the 200th anniversary of Offenbach's birth. Premiered in 1859, this rarely performed work is a most amusing comedy of errors, which is the typical frameset that the composer used to represent and mock the quirks and vices of the French society of his times.

Acclaimed director Laurent Pelly is one of the most renowned and prolific interpreters of Offenbach's brilliantly inventive operettas, including several productions for the Opéra de Lyon. The composer's satirical and hilarious opéra bouffe version of Charles Perrault's 17th Century tale of the serial wife-murdering Bluebeard (in which no-one actually gets murdered!), deftly tows the line between humour and cruelty, with a star performance from Yann...

Jacques Offenbach had already achieved fame as an operetta composer by 1866, but that year's premiere of La Vie parisienne was his first portrayal of contemporary Parisian life. With its tale of romantic intrigues, disguises and comic celebrations of the mad gaiety of life in the French capital, La Vie parisienne became popular in the nation's theatres, but not after a hasty re-working of its final acts after protests from the original performers....