Galop, from Orpheus in the Underworld

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) was born into a German Jewish family in 1819, but the majority of his career unfolded in France. He had moved to France as a teenager in order to study at the famed Paris Conservatory. However, academic pursuits left Offenbach cold, and he quickly transitioned into a career as a virtuoso cellist and budding impresario. A contemporary of Richard Wagner, Offenbach’s musical tastes contrasted strongly with those of his countryman. He strove to compose light-hearted and gently satirical stage works. By the 1870s he had succeeded tremendously, authoring nearly one hundred operettas and achieving international fame. That reputation helped sustain him during the Franco-Prussian war, when his German ancestry made him persona non grata for a time. In the later 1870s he returned to Paris and diligently worked on his only full-length serious opera, The Tales of Hoffman, which he did not live to see performed.
At his death in 1880, Offenbach was perhaps still best known for his first operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld. Orpheus typifies the grand scale that marked all of Offenbach’s productions: lavish sets, numerous principal roles, and a large chorus and orchestra. Demonstrating the truth of P.T. Barnum’s famous phrase—“There’s no such thing as bad publicity”—a prominent Parisian critic’s condemnation of Orpheus for its profanity and satire of Napoleon III could hardly have worked better at filling the seats. One of the work’s most memorable themes—and another reason for its popular success—is the can-can, which brought the sexuality and abandon of low culture into an artistic situation that—uncomfortably for some, deliciously for others—rubbed shoulders with high culture. The music of Offenbach’s Infernal Galop portrays a wild party the gods are throwing in hell. Having escaped their Olympian boredom, their frivolity seems almost boundless. A broad, magisterial introduction captures our attention without in the least foreshadowing what is to come. Triangle and mincing gestures transition to the first strains of the familiar can-can material, which features rollicking brass and crash cymbals. The contrast between moods and sheer exuberance put the Galop on par with the best of Johann Strauss or moments from Liszt’s beloved Hungarian Rhapsodies. Even if some rejected to the coarse implications of such music, almost no one doubted Offenbach’s ability to craft an infectious tune. I doubt even the most prudish listener could have kept from humming it afterward.

(c) Jason Stell