IV
We have still to give an account of the development of the opéra comique in another direction—that of farcical comedy, a task which falls well within the chronological limits of this chapter. One reason for the gradual approximation of the opéra comique to the drame lyrique and grand opera, quite aside from the influence of romanticism, lay in the appearance of the opéra bouffe, representing parody, not sentiment. For if the opéra comique and drame lyrique of the first three quarters of the nineteenth century represented the advance of artistic taste and the preference of the musically educated for the essentially romantic rather than the merely entertaining; the opéra bouffe or farcical operetta, a small and trivial form, was the delight of the musical groundlings of the second empire, at a time when the pursuit of pleasure and the satisfaction of material wants were the great preoccupations of society; Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) was in a sense the creator of this Parisian novelty. Though Offenbach was born of German-Jewish parents in Cologne, the greater part of his life was spent in Paris, and his music was more typically French than that of any of his French rivals. The tone of French society during the period of the Second Empire was set by the court. The court organized innumerable entertainments, banquets, reviews, and gorgeous official ceremonies which succeeded one another without interruption. Music hall songs and opéras bouffes, races and public festivals, evening restaurants and the amusements they provided, made the fame of this new Paris. And the music of the music halls and opéras bouffes was the music of Offenbach, the offspring of ‘an eccentric, rather short-kilted and disheveled Muse,’ who later assumed a soberer garb in the hands of Lecocq, Audran, and Hervé.
In conjunction with Offenbach the librettists Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy were the authors of these operettes and farces which made the prosperity of the minor Parisian theatres of the period. The libretto of the opéra bouffe was usually one of intrigue, witty, if coarse, and into the texture of which the representation of contemporary whims and social oddities was cleverly interwoven. Although the opéras bouffes were broad and lively libels of the society of the time, ‘they savored strongly of the vices and the follies they were supposed to satirize.’ Offenbach was peculiarly happy in developing in musical burlesque the extravagant character of his situations. His melodic vein, though often trivial and vulgar, was facile and spontaneous, and he was master of an ironical musical humor.[106] The theatre which he opened as the ‘Bouffes Parisiens’ in 1855 was crowded night after night by those who came to hear his brilliant, humorous trifles. La grande duchesse de Gerolstein, in which the triumph of the Bouffes Parisiens culminated, is perhaps the most popular burlesque operetta ever written, and it marked the acceptance of opéra bouffe as a new form worth cultivating. Offenbach’s works were given all over Europe, were imitated by Lecocq, Audran, Planquette, and others; and, being gay, tuneful, and exhilarating, were not hindered in becoming popular by their want of refinement. But after 1870 the vogue of parody largely declined, and, though Offenbach composed industriously till the time of his death and though his opéras bouffes are still given here and there at intervals, the form he created has practically passed away. As a species akin in verbal texture to the comédie grivoise of Collet, adapted to the idiom of a later generation, and as a return of the opéra comique to the burlesque and extravagance of the old vaudeville, the opéra bouffe has a genuine historic interest.
But it must not be forgotten that Offenbach created at least one work which is still a favorite number of the modern grand opera repertory. This is Les Contes d’Hoffmann, a fantastic opera in three acts. It appeared after his death. It is genuine opéra comique of the romantic type, rich in pleasing grace of expression, in variety of melodic development, and grotesque fancy; and, though the music lacks depth, it is descriptive and imaginatively interesting, wonderfully charming and melodious, and has survived when the hundred or more opéras bouffes which Offenbach composed are practically forgotten.
F. H. M.