Jacques Offenbach W.C. Handy

Jacques Offenbach, a German Jew by birth, a Parisian by choice, is the conductor and composer best remembered for Les Contes d’Hoffman (The Tales of Hoffman). He became as integral a part of the Parisian artistic scene in the Paris of the mid-nineteenth century as Mozart had been in the Vienna of seventy years before.

Unfortunately, Offenbach’s reputation suffered in the 1870s from France’s war with Germany and from a change in musical taste. Offenbach himself came to regret that he had spent his career writing work not suited to his talents, and decided to leave this life on a high note, so he worked frantically against his fatal illness to produce his masterpiece, “Tales,” a work drawn, as the title suggests, from the short stories of E.T.A. Hoffman.

Offenbach lived just long enough to complete this work, but not long enough to see it produced. It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in February 1881, four months after the composer’s death.