Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach made Paris laugh for a living. Born in Cologne in 1819, the son of a synagogue cantor, he was sent to Paris at fourteen to study cello and stayed to become the most Parisian of composers. After years as a cellist and conductor, he opened his own small theater, the Bouffes-Parisiens, in 1855 and began pouring out operettas: fast, tuneful comedies that poked fun at politics, high society, and grand opera itself.

He wrote nearly a hundred of them. Orphée aux Enfers, his cheeky retelling of the Orpheus myth, features the galloping dance number the world now knows as the can-can music. At the end of his life he worked on something different, a serious opera about the writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, and died in 1880 before finishing it; Les contes d'Hoffmann was completed by others and became his most lasting stage work.

Start with Orphée aux Enfers for the fizz, then Les contes d'Hoffmann for the darker, stranger Offenbach.