Jacques Offenbach Music Education Posters & Prints
for the music studio, arts and social studies classrooms, home schoolers, decor for office or home.

Jacques Offenbach
b. 6-20-1819; Cologne, Germany
d. 10-5-1880; France

Jacques Offenbach, a composer and impresario whose comic pieces for musical theater are still popular, was also making social commentary on the times. His most recognized work is “The Infernal Galop” from his opera bouffa “Orpheus in the Underworld.

He was well known for parodying other composers' music, some like Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner did not enjoy the attention he paid them. Friedrich Nietzsche considered Offenbach both an “artistic genius” and a “clown”, writing that “nearly every one” of Offenbach's works achieves half a dozen “moments of wanton perfection”.

Offenbach also began The Tales of Hoffmann based on the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann, which was then completed by others after his death.

Orpheus in the Underworld is a reworking of the Greek myth of Orpheus and the death of his wife Eurydice.

Offenbach crafted “an irreverent parody and scathing satire on Gluck and his Orfeo ed Euridice and culminates in the risqué galop infernal (“Infernal Galop”) that shocked some in the audience at the premiere”.

It is Offenbach's most populary know work because of the galop at the very end of the opera - - just think the “Cancan”.

Tales of Hoffmann

Offenbach also wrote an opera The Tales of Hoffmann based on the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann.

Offenbach's operetta La Perichole was based on the life of Micaela Villegas, a much beloved 18th century entertainer in Peru and the mistress of the Viceroy of Peru.

The singer Hortense Schneider was a favored performer for Offenbach and appeared in many of his productions.