FEATURED DUET: BELLE NUIT, Ô NUIT D'AMOUR & JACQUES OFFENBACH'S ROCKY ROAD TO MUSICAL INFAMY

"Le Mozart des Champs-Elysées" 
("The Mozart of Champs-Elysées")
Jacques Offenbach turns 197 today.

Today’s featured duet comes to us from 19th century German-turned French composer Jacques Offenbach’s final unfinished grand opera Les contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann).

The gorgeous barcarolle for soprano and mezzo soprano, from the opera’s third act, “Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour" (Beautiful night, o night of love), and the entire work itself have become staple pieces in the West, with the famous barcarolle often finding itself enhancing many and varied soundtracks of mainstream and independent film, and Les Contes itself greatly assisting in the dogged quest of making for it’s creator a household name.

Les Contes d’Hoffmann’s popularity is especially notable, as both the work and it’s composer would have experienced many roadblocks along the journey to success.

Jacques Offenbach, born Jacob Offenbach 197 years ago today on June 20, 1819 at Cologne in Prussia (in what is present day Germany), was the 7th child of a family of 10 by Jewish parents. Although young Jacob showed signs of exceptional musical aptitude as early as the age of nine years, having already mastered the violin with astonishing and “terrifying” ability,  and having begun the practice of composition and had recently taken up the cello, Prussian musical society in the early 19th century would prove problematic for musicians of Jewish origin looking to advance in their practice or trade and make a name for themselves across the continent.

Jacob’s father Isaac, would send his son west, to France by the age of fourteen alongside elder brother Julius, aged 18 - also musically gifted - to study in Paris.

An esteemed Italian in Paris:
composer and Paris Conservatoire
Director Luigi Cherubini

It would be in Paris, at the prestigious Paris Conservatoire that young Jacob would shatter his way through the first of his obstacles with remarkable ease: running the exclusive Conservatory was one of the early 19th centuries’ most prominent Italian masters of Opera in France, composer Luigi Cherubini. So exalted a station held Cherubini as Director of the conservatoire, and so particular were his refinements, even the likes of (a young) Franz Liszt had applied for, and had been refused admission within it’s hallowed ranks. Jacob’s tender age was but just one factor working against the young hopeful: unlike in Prussia, where the musician’s Judaism would prove a hindrance to himself, in Paris - which was more accepting of Jewish talents - it was Offenbach’s status as a Prussian national that was viewed by Cherubini and the Conservatoire as most distasteful.

It would only be after much persuasion on the part of Isaac Offenbach that the pubescent Jacob would be made allowed to audition. Moments into the young prodigy’s performance, Cherubini abruptly called for silence, allegedly remarking to Isaac’s most gifted son

“Enough, young man! You are now a pupil of this Conservatoire!"

It would be during this period that Jacob would become Jacques, and where the former singer and violinist would begin to hone his skills as a virtuoso of the cello. Although having spent only a year within it’s precincts, it would be at the Conservatoire that Jacques would find himself rubbing shoulders with classical music’s elite, and instilling within himself a very powerful sense of his own self worth as a musician. Very soon after voluntary withdrawing from the Conservatoire, Offenbach would enter into the cello tutelage of one Louis-Pierre Norblin, and join the Opéra-Comique orchestra as a cellist where he would even further refine his skills earn the distinction of one of the finest cellists on the continent. Jacques would also study composition under maestro Fromental Halévy of La Juive fame.

French composer Fromental Halévy
would prove instrumental in young
Jacques early foray into the art of
musical composition.

Around this period of self-discovery and burgeoning success, Offenbach would develop a taste for the musical theater, leasing a small property in the Champs-Élysées (which he named Bouffes-Parisiens) wherein he would test out some of his own compositions. In spite of the odds working against him as a Prussian Jew in Paris, the now 36 year old musician would find his latest venture a smashing success, with his small-scale productions earning him a reputation as a pioneer and master of the operetta, allowing him to branch out into in creating larger performances, in even grander venues. This was no small feat for the newly established composer given the Parisian government’s notorious restrictions on musical productions: such stage plays were to be limited to single acts, with a maximum of three characters, with a strict prohibition on the implementation of chorus.

Within three years of Jacques indoctrination into musical theater, the Prussian prodigy would find himself for the first time beginning to build a reputation outside of Cologne and Paris, as his satirical 1858 operetta Orphée aux enfers causes a sensation in France and eventually attracts the attention of the Second French Empire under Napoleon III, who would later grant the Prussian émigré French citizenship and the much prestiged Légion d'Honneur (a distinction shared by former tutor Luigi Cherubini). Offenbach’s reputation as a master of the operetta would extend to Vienna, which enabled the former Prussian national to introduce into musical Viennese society several of his successful works then unknown to it's high art-loving patrons.

Unfortunately for the newly minted Frenchman, nationalistic pride spurned on by the revolution combined with an ill-suited business sense would plunge the composer into bankruptcy as the European populous divided into sects following France's defeat by the Prussians in 1871. Once more, Jacques was viewed by the public as Jacob – Prussian intruder.

18th/19th century Prussian author and
polymath E.T.A. Hoffmann's short stories
would provide the base for Offenbach's
ultimate success and lifelong dream of
musical infamy. Sadly, Jacques did not
survive to revel in his posthumous notoriety.

It would only be following the death of Offenbach, 9 years later at the age of 61, that Jacques, through his second attempt at a grand opera Les Contes d’Hoffman (The Tales of Hoffmann, based on three short stories penned by author and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann) would finally achieve international fame, although, household name status would arguably not be seen until well after the composer’s passing, at the height of the twenty-first century, following a series of incomplete performances (said to have involved the much beloved barcarolle and the opera’s third act), a gas explosion and resulting fire at a separate, full-feature performance in 1881, and a further fire 6 years later in 1887 at the Opéra-Comique which had destroyed much of the orchestral parts – and the onset of the second world war, wherein composers and works created by musicians of Jewish origin found themselves frowned upon and/or had been made the subject of bans in many parts of Europe.

It would only be in a post-war Europe that Jacques Offenbach’s magnum opus would be re-introduced into high musical society and made allowed to flourish, unhindered by the many historical roadblocks that had been forced upon it’s composer.

Sadly, it was a level of infamy unknown to Offenbach during his lifetime. 

Enjoy below the beautiful “Belle Nuit…” by Jacques Offenbach featuring mezzo soprano Elīna Garanča and soprano Anna Netrebko, and
marvel at the acoustic beauty that may have never been:



-Rose.

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UNKNOWN DRAFT OF SCHUMANN'S “FANTASIESTÜCKE” (OP. 12) TO HIT LONDON AUCTION BLOCK TUESDAY 27 NOVEMBER

London auctioneer Bonhams has announced the inclusion of a hitherto unknown draft from 19th century German composer Robert Schumann's 1837 “Fantasiestücke,” the collective title of a set of eight pieces for piano in its November 27 Fine Books and Manuscripts sale.

Schumann drew inspiration for Fantasiestücke from the Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier of author E.T.A. Hoffmann - a collection of novellas, essays, treatises, letters and writings concerning music. Additionally, Schumann attributed the dual facets of his personality into each movement after Florestan (impetuous, passionate) and Eusebius (a sensitive dreamer) - characters assigned by the composer who dwell among the fictitious “Davidsbünd,” a band of Davidian artists who rejected the cultural Philistines of the era. As such, the eight pieces which make up Fantasiestücke vary in mood from sensitive and serene to playful and jovial. Schumann had previously explored this concept earlier the same year with his famous eighteen-piece Davidsbündlertänze, his sixth opus.

The 14-page manuscript, which is projected to sell between £200,000-300,000 (its current estimated value), is described by Bonhams as a “major discovery [which] provides a fascinating insight into Schumann’s working methods, and the creative decisions he took in completing the version of Fantasiestücke we are familiar with today...it contains six of the eight pieces from the final work and a ninth piece that was dropped at proof stage. Markings in Schumann’s characteristic red crayon also show how he experimented with the order in which the pieces should be played.”

*CLICK TO ENLARGE* Excerpt from the manuscript of
Robert Schumann's "Fantasiestücke"

The manuscript, completed in Schumann's own hand in July 1837, survived potential desecration during WWII thanks to a fortuitous exchange of hands that began with Schumann himself, who delivered it into the possession of the Jewish composer Gustav Schmidt in August of the same year, later to be acquired by Jewish-German jurist Dr. Moritz Sprinz, who would carry the work among his possessions during his flight from Germany in February 1939, mere months before the outbreak of the war.

Fantasiestücke is listed under Bonhams Fine Books and Manuscripts, Lot 31. The auction will begin at 13:00 GMT.

Listen below to all eight pieces of Schumann's Fantasiestücke. Martha Argerich performs.


External links:

• Bonhams listing
• Press release 

- Rose.

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EXPERTS ALLEGE (AGAIN) CHOPIN’S “ROMANTIC DEATH” CAUSED BY THE WHITE PLAGUE TO BE CONSIDERED “CASE CLOSED” AFTER RECENT "EXAMINATION" OF A NEARLY TWO CENTURIES' OLD HEART, PRESERVED IN COGNAC, MAKES THE PAGES OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF MEDICINE

"The Death of Chopin." Chopin surrounded himself with close family and friends (including
his physician) whilst on his deathbed. Among them were George Sand's daughter
Solange, and one Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, pictured at the head of the bed. This
engraving, after the painting by Félix Joseph Barrias, re-tells the pitiable scene recalled by
Solange: "One October evening in 1849, the 16th, approximately twenty people were
fearfully waiting in the living room..Chopin had someone ask whether Countess
Potocka was also in the living room, and if she would sing. The piano was moved closer,
the doors were opened, and the beautiful countess began to sing. She sang with a
broken heart, a voice full of tears! The gathered guests fell on their knees, stifling a sob."

17th of October, 1849, Place Vendôme 12, Paris, sometime after midnight: a grievously ailing Frédéric Chopin lay on his deathbed, soaked in sweat and appearing gaunt and pale in his sickly pallor (telltale signs of advanced "consumption" - the colloquial term for Tuberculosis - that highly “romantic” yet exceedingly infectious disease which earned its moniker from the sufferer appearing to onlookers to be "consuming from the inside." 

It was considered a "fashionable" pestilence, beloved by an uninformed public who bore witness to the various stages of “beauty”  which the vile scourge would temporarily extol in it’s victims - many of them poets, artists, writers, composers - stricken during the so-called “romantic era” of music and art: those poor victims who, as the disease progressed, would experience a brief period of external grandeur: a tauter waistline (due to anemia) and more porcelain complexion. It seemed a gift from heaven for men and women alike seeking to edge off a few years - an otherworldly elixir of youth.

For actual suffers of the disease, however, the slow moving contagion was anything but a gift from the gods. Chopin knew this all too well: when prompted that fateful autumnal evening at the Place Vendôme, the very mortal Chopin had seemingly accepted his early mortality and must have known the end was drawing near. He at once informed his physician, who had gathered at his deathbed, that he was suffering “no longer”.

Within hours, he would be dead.

With his passing, the Polish-born, French idol joined a large cast of artistic carriers of the disease, all of whom expired before their time, and before the advent of penicillin (antibiotics) (see: Louis Pasteur here at Unraveling Musical Myths) and the discovery of the illness’s progression by German physician and microbiologist Robert Koch (pictured below, right) in the late 19th century.

Prior to Koch’s discovery in the 1882 of the slow growing bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, it was widely believed amongst the public (and even among physicians themselves) that “TB” (code for Tuberculosis) was an inherited disease – the public taking it one step further, claiming it a disease inherited only by the minds of great men, and could be “healed” only by the divine touch of a Royal Monarch (which quite a few Kings were known to have taken advantage of, providing the "healing service" - for a pretty penny, of course). Parisian women and men alike were known to mask their faces in a veil of lead-ridden white paint (makeup: a disaster of its own), starve themselves and tighten their corsets to the point of asphyxiation and repeated cases of syncope to mimic the mysterious disease which inflicted their exalted idols.

With his passing, Chopin found himself in the company of fellow composers Alfredo Catalani – the Italian mastermind behind the 1892 opera La Wally; The exquisitely gifted and much admired German composer and musician Carl Maria von Weber of Der Freischütz fame; the young and immensely talented Giovanni Batista Pergolesi - just 26 when he perished from the infernal white plague, and whose glorious Stabat Mater remains to this day one of the greatest sacred works ever composed; Igor Stravinsky – that Russian-born mover and shaker that revolutionized the modern orchestra and ballet not only in Paris but around the globe, and, just over a century and a half earlier to Chopin’s demise, the great English composer Henry Purcell, beloved – and employed by - Britain’s reigning Royal family – and that's just to name a few.

Listen below to the exquisite voice of Renata Tebaldi as she sings from Catalani's opera La Wally "Ebben! Ne andrò lontana:"



Tuberculosis, Consumption, Phthisis, The White Plague, The White Death, “TB” - a disease of many names - even made appearances on the theatrical and operatic stage. Italian composer Giacomo Puccini famously (and erroneously) referred to it as a “social disease,” in his 1896 opera La bohème: abandoned by her lover for fear of catching TB via sexual transmission, the opera’s heroine, Mimi, ashamed, ailed, and anguished, perishes without seeking medical intervention.