MI: LIBRARY: PEOPLE: OFFENBACH

Due to the greater tolerance of Jews in Paris at the time, Offenbach’s father moved him to Paris where he was enrolled as a student of cello at the Paris Conservatoire. During the year of 1844, following his conversion to Cathlocism, he married the daughter of a Spanish Carlist. After having been a cellist in an orchestra he was, in 1849, risentto a director at a theatre.

In 1855 he opened a theatre of his own, Bouffes-Parisiens, which he ran until 1866 and where many of his famous operettas were performed. An operetta being a light, comical opera, something Offenbach was credited as creating. The wonderfully celebrated operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld, was performed at Bouffes-Parisiens.

He would go on to lead other theatres but they held financial disasters for him. After a United States tour he devoted the remaining years of his life to composing. The one grand opera of his, The Tales of Hoffman, would be interrupted by his death and was later finished by another composer.