The Biography of Valtesse de la Bigne, Mistress of Paris
We’ve all read stories about the big players: Jacques Offenbach, Ludovic Halevy, Henri Meilhac, and certainly Napoleon III. But you
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Offenbach and the Theatre Bouffe in Saint Petersburg, 1870-1878
Offenbach was introduced to the Russian stage when a French company played La belle Hélène at the Imperial Mikhailovsky Theatre
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“The Grand Duke of Gerolstein”: A Milanese Byblow of the Grand Duchess
La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein was, arguably, Offenbach’s first truly transglobal success. It benefitted from opening during the Exposition universelle
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Lillian Russell (1860-1922) Revisited: The Amazing Life Of A “Scandalous” Operetta Diva
With all this free time at home right now I’ve started working my way through various DVD boxes I’ve had
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Who Was The Great Opéra-Bouffe Tenor “Potel” – Also Known As “Le Bel Armand”?
The folk who created the musical works of Meilhac, Halévy, Crémieux, Hervé and their colleagues, and of the parallel composers,
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“Barbe-Bleue” In Lyon: A Night Of Perfection
It is so easy to rip a performance apart. But what do you do if you see perfection? Alright, if
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The Queen of Offenbach’s Bouffes: The Life & Career Of Lise Tautin
The Queen of Offenbach’s Bouffes? Oh, yes, I hear the unenlightened nod. ‘Hortense Schneider. We’ve all heard of her’. I:
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“Une danseuse à l’Opéra”: Kurt Gänzl Examines The Phenomenon of Man And Mistress In The Second Empire
‘Une danseuse à l’Opéra’ – it was a phrase which, under the brilliance of the French Second Empire, had a
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Offenbach’s “Black Venus”, Or: Examining “La Belle Hélène” As An Intersection Of Race And Operetta
Sometimes you read an operetta essay that deeply disturbs you – not because it is badly written or full of
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“Jacques Offenbach – Meister des Vergnügens”: Ein Interview mit Heiko Schon
Große Ereignisse werfen ihre Schatten voraus, und so sind im Vorfeld des 200. Offenbach-Geburtstags 2019 mehrere neue Bücher auf den
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Desert Island Disc? “La Périchole” From Montpellier With Marc Minkowski
So here it is, finally: the live broadcast of Marc Minkowski’s performance of La Périchole with his Les Musiciens du
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Offenbach-Star “Mlle Géraldine.” Or: Every Picture Hides A Story
Many years ago, when I was collecting illustrations for my musico-theatrical books, I haunted e-bay. Bought something weekly. But then
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“Ritter Blaubart” At Komische Oper: Stefan Herheim’s Varieté Vanitas
Yes, it was a good idea to bring back Offenbach’s murderous Barbe-Bleue to Berlin at Komische Oper where, you will
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Oozing Sex: Julia Baron, Opéra-Bouffe Star And Top Paris Courtesan
When I lived in St Paul de Vence, my partner Ian and I took a weekly bus jaunt down to
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Offenbach’s “Ritter Blaubart” In Cottbus: Reviving Felsenstein
Offenbach’s glorious sex-and-social-conventions farce Barbe-bleue was a huge hit in Paris and Vienna back in the 1860s, when Hortense Schneider
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A Major Star Of 19th Century French Musical Theatre: Jean-François Philibert Berthelier
Jean-François Philibert Berthelier (b Panissières, Loire, 14 December 1828; d Paris, 29 September 1888) was a comic actor and singer
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“Bouffe”: A New Theater Piece About Offenbach And Hortense Schneider At The Brighton Fringe Festival
We could not agree more with this statement of Red Blonde Productions and West Sussex Opera: “What Cabaret was to
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Is There An Ideal “La Belle Hélène” Recording – With Sex Appeal?
In early 2015, the Komische Oper presented their very first Operetta Symposium, dealing with the “kinky” side of the genre
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The Original Operetta-Diva: Hortense Schneider
She was the six-year shooting star of Offenbach’s Théâtre des Variétés series whose dazzling career declined at the same time
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Exporting Operette: The World Is Not Enough
What became eventually known as “operetta” or “opérette” didn’t start its life under that name. The earliest works of the
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“Horrible Prettiness or Satanic Subversiveness”?
“Gender Studies” are something on everyone’s lips these days. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, the operetta world has hardly taken note of
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LA BELLE HÉLÈNE Opéra-bouffe in 3 acts
The fourth of Offenbach’s great opéras-bouffes burlesqueing ancient historical legend or mythology (after Orphée aux enfers, Geneviève de Brabant and
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BARBE-BLEUE Opéra-bouffe in 3 acts
After their enormous success with La Belle Hélène at the Théâtre des Variétés, the Meilhac-Halévy-Offenbach team followed up with a
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