William Leonard Laurence
Laurence on the island of Tinian before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Born	Leib Wolf Siew (1888-03-07)March 7, 1888 Salantai, Lithuania
Died	March 19, 1977(1977-03-19) (aged 89) Majorca, Spain
Employer	New York Times

William Leonard Laurence (March 7, 1888 – March 19, 1977) was a Jewish Lithuanian-born American journalist known for his science journalism writing of the 1940s and 1950s while working for the New York Times. He received two Pulitzer Prizes, and as the official historian of the Manhattan Project was the only journalist to witness the Trinity test and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. He is credited with coining the iconic phrase "Atomic Age" which became popular in the 1950s.

Biography[link]

Laurence was born in Salantai, then part of Russia though now in Lithuania, and emigrated to the United States in 1905 after participating in the Russian Revolution of 1905. His name was originally Leib Wolf Siew, but he changed it after immigrating, taking "William" after William Shakespeare, "Leonard" after Leonardo da Vinci, and "Lawrence" after a street he lived on in Roxbury, Massachusetts (he changed the "w" to a "u" in reference to Friedrich Schiller's Laura). He attended college at Harvard University, Harvard Law School, and Boston University, and became a naturalized United States citizen in 1913. During World War I, he served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and in 1919 attended the University of Besançon in France.

In 1926 he began his career as a journalist, working for The New York World. In 1930 he began working at The New York Times, specializing where possible in reporting on scientific issues. He married Florence Davidow in 1931.

In 1934, Laurence co-founded the National Association of Science Writers, and in 1936 he covered the Harvard Tercenary Conference of Arts and Sciences, work for which he and four other science reporters received the 1937 Pulitzer Prize in Journalism.

"Atomic Bill"[link]

In May 1940, Laurence published a front-page exclusive in the New York Times on successful attempts in isolating uranium-235 which were reported in Physical Review, and outlined many (somewhat hyperbolic) claims about the possible future of nuclear power.^[1] He had assembled it in part out of his own fear that Nazi Germany was attempting to develop atomic energy, and had hoped the article would galvanize a U.S. effort. Though his article had no effect on the U.S. bomb program, it was passed to the Soviet mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky by his son, a professor of history at Yale University, and motivated Vernadsky to urge Soviet authorities to embark on their own atomic program and established one of the first commissions to formulate "a plan of measures which it would be necessary to realize in connection with the possibility of using intraatomic energy" (no full-scale atomic energy program began in the Soviet Union until after the war, however).^[2]

In April 1945, Laurence was summoned to the secret Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico by General Leslie Groves to serve as the official historian^[3] of the Manhattan Project. In this capacity he was also the author of many of the first official press releases about nuclear weapons, including some delivered by the Department of War and President Harry S. Truman. He was the only journalist present at the Trinity test in July 1945, and beforehand prepared statements to be delivered in case the test ended in a disaster which killed those involved. As part of his work related to the Project, he also interviewed the airmen who flew on the mission to drop the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Laurence himself flew aboard the B-29 The Great Artiste, which served as a blast instrumentation aircraft, for the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. He visited the Test Able site at Bikini Atoll aboard the press ship, 'Appalachian', for the bomb test on July 1, 1946.^[4]

For his wartime coverage, he received a Pulitzer Prize in 1946. At the office of the Times he was thereafter referred to as "Atomic Bill", to differentiate him from William H. Lawrence, a political reporter at the newspaper.

In his autobiography, Richard Feynman mentioned William Laurence standing next to him during the Trinity test. Feynman stated, "I had been the one who was supposed to have taken him around. Then it was found that it was too technical for him, and so later H.D. Smyth came and I showed him around."^[5]

In 1946, he published an account of the Trinity test as Dawn Over Zero, which went through at least two revisions. He continued to work at the Times through the 1940s and into the 1950s, and published a book on defense against nuclear war in 1950. In 1951, his book The Hell Bomb warned about the use of a cobalt bomb – a form of hydrogen bomb (still an untested device at the time he wrote it) engineered to produce a maximum amount of nuclear fallout.

In 1956, he was present at the testing of a hydrogen bomb at the Pacific Proving Grounds. That same year, he also became appointed Science Editor of the New York Times, succeeding Waldemar Kaempffert. He served in this capacity until he retired in 1964.

Death[link]

Laurence died in 1977 in Majorca, Spain, of complications from a blood clot in his brain.^[6]

Call for revocation of 1946 Pulitzer Prize[link]

In 2004, journalists Amy Goodman and David Goodman called for the Pulitzer Board to strip Laurence and his paper, The New York Times, of his 1946 Pulitzer Prize.^[7] The journalists argued that at the time Laurence "was also on the payroll of War Department"^[8]" and that, after the atomic bombings, he “had a front-page story in the Times^[9] disputing the notion that radiation sickness was killing people."^[3] They concluded that "his faithful parroting of the government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb”.^[10][11]

In their book Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial from 1995, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell asserted, "Here was the nation's leading science reporter, severely compromised, not only unable but disinclined to reveal all he knew about the potential hazards of the most important scientific discovery of his time."^[12]

Laurence denied that the black rain fallout in Hiroshima was significantly radioactive because it originated from the firestorm that began 30 minutes after explosion, when the radioactive mushroom cloud had been blown many miles downwind.^{[citation needed]}

Books by Laurence[link]

• Laurence, William L. Dawn over zero: The story of the atomic bomb. New York: Knopf, 1946.
• ________. We are not helpless: How we can defend ourselves against atomic weapons. New York, 1950.
• ________. The hell bomb. New York: Knopf, 1951.
• ________. Men and atoms: The discovery, the uses, and the future of atomic energy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.

See also[link]

• Propaganda in the United States
• American propaganda during World War II

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Keever, Beverly Deepe. News Zero: the New York Times and the Bomb. Common Courage Press, 2004. ISBN 1-56751-282-8
• Weart, Spencer. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

External links[link]

• Annotated Bibliography for William L. Laurence from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Bio of Laurence at NuclearFiles.org
• "Hiroshima Cover-up: Stripping the War Department’s Times man of His Pulitzer" – from Democracy Now!, August 5, 2005 (video, audio, and print transcript)

Portrait of William Warfield by Carl Van Vechten, 7 Feb. 1951

William Caesar Warfield (22 January 1920 – 26 August 2002), was an American concert bass-baritone singer and actor.

Early life and career[link]

Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas and grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was called to serve as pastor of Mt. Vernon Church. He gave his recital debut in New York's Town Hall on 19 March 1950. He was quickly invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to tour Australia and give 35 concerts. In 1952, Warfield performed in Porgy and Bess during a tour of Europe sponsored by the U.S. State Department (he made six separate tours for the US Department of State, more than any other American solo artist.) In this production he played opposite the opera star Leontyne Price, whom he soon married, but the demands of two separate careers left them little time together. They divorced in 1972, but were featured together in a 1963 studio recording of excerpts from Porgy and Bess.

According to a recent exhibit about World War Two, Warfield was the only African American member of the "Ritchie Boys", thousands of soldiers who were trained at Fort Ritchie, Maryland. It was an intelligence center where hundreds of Jewish recruits who fled Nazi Germany for the United States were trained to interrogate their one-time countrymen. According to the exhibit at the Zekelman Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Warfield was brought to the camp because of his strong German skills which he perfected while studying music. Because of segregation, his skills were never put to use.

Warfield was a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. In 1975 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He later became Chairman of the Voice Department. In 1994, he moved to Northwestern University's School of Music, where he stayed until his death.

He sang the premiere performances of the version for soloist and orchestra of Set I of Aaron Copland's Old American Songs in 1955, and of the version for soloist and piano of Set II of the collection in 1958. (He also recorded both sets of the songs.) His vocal talents were also featured on two recordings of Handel's "Messiah" – a classic, but heavily cut, performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandy (released in 1959), and a lesser-known, drastically restructured recording made in 1956, also heavily cut, with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Bernstein combined the Christmas and Resurrection sections, and ended with the arias and choruses depicting the death of Christ. The Ormandy recording featured the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and Bernstein's the Westminster Choir.

Warfield was also accomplished in acting and poetry recitation. He played the character De Lawd in a celebrated Hallmark Hall of Fame television production of The Green Pastures, a role he played twice (these were the days of live TV, before video tape, though both versions survive as kinescopes^{[1] [2]}). He appeared in two Hollywood films, including a star-making performance as Joe in MGM's 1951 Technicolor remake of Show Boat. His other film was an overlooked item called "Old Explorers", starring James Whitmore and José Ferrer. In a nod to "Show Boat", Warfield played a cameo role as a tugboat captain. Footage of Warfield in "Show Boat" has been seen in several TV shows and/or films, notably That's Entertainment!. Warfield played his Show Boat role in two other productions of the musical – the 1966 Lincoln Center production, and a 1972 production in Vienna. And he was heard singing Ol' Man River in three different record albums of the show – the 1951 motion picture soundtrack album on MGM Records, a 1962 studio album featuring Barbara Cook and John Raitt on Columbia Masterworks, and the RCA Victor album made from the Lincoln Center production.

Warfield made an appearance on The Colgate Comedy Hour and on a program called TV Recital Hall in 1951, the same year that he made his screen debut in Show Boat. He later appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1955. In 1961, he appeared as a recital soloist on an episode of the Young People's Concerts, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. In March 1984 he was the winner of a Grammy in the "Spoken Word" category for his outstanding narration of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait accompanied by the Eastman Philharmonia Orchestra. And in the 1990s, he narrated a special jazz arrangement of music from "Show Boat", on the PRI program Riverwalk Jazz. In 1999 Warfield joined baritones Robert Sims and Benjamin Matthews in a trio by the name of "Three Generations". Managed by Arthur White, this ensemble toured the United States giving full concerts of African American Spirituals and folk songs until Warfield's death in 2002.

Vocal decline[link]

Beginning in 1962, Warfield began to have some trouble with his voice, as he himself admitted in his autobiography. This was only slightly noticeable on the 1962 studio recording of Show Boat. By the time he made the 1966 recording of the Lincoln Center production of the musical, his voice had deepened from merely bass-baritone to a full-fledged bass, and he could not sing the climactic high note on Ol' Man River as easily as he had in the 1951 film version, though he sounded fine on his lower notes. Because of this problem, however, he compensated by learning how to sing even more expressively than he had before.

By 1976, Warfield, although still making various stage and television appearances, was not singing as much as he had in the past. He served as narrator in various orchestral works, such as Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, and occasionally performed sprechstimme roles in works by Arnold Schoenberg. However, he did sing on occasion during his final years, despite the fact that by then his singing voice was practically gone. In those years, when he sang Ol' Man River, he would not perform it with the original lyrics, but with the altered ones that Paul Robeson used in his recitals beginning in 1938.

Organizations[link]

Warfield was active in many organizations, After appearing as the featured artist at the 50th year convention of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc. (NANM), he became active with the organization, serving as its President for two terms. He later served on the boards of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) and the Schiller Institute. After joining the Schiller Institute in 1996, he began to collaborate with acclaimed vocal coach Sylvia Olden Lee in a project to save the performance tradition of the Negro spiritual.^[3] During the final years of his life, from 1999 to 2002, he performed regularly at Schiller Institute biannual conferences, often with Olden Lee as his accompanist, and the two of them travelled the country conducting singing workshops for members of the LaRouche Youth Movement.^[4] Warfield was made an honorary member of the Delta Lambda chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia at Ball State University in 1961, and awarded the Fraternity's Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award in 1976 at its national convention in Evansville, Indiana.

Legacy[link]

The William Warfield Scholarship Fund continues to support young African American classical singers at the Eastman School of Music. To date the fund has awarded scholarships to over 50 students.^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• William Warfield at the Internet Movie Database
• William Warfield at the Internet Broadway Database
• William Warfield Scholarship Fund
• Schiller Institute biography and obituary
• William Warfield interview by Bruce Duffie
• National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc.
• William Warfield at Find a Grave

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Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dunbar circa 1890
Born	(1872-06-27)June 27, 1872 Dayton, Ohio, United States
Died	February 9, 1906(1906-02-09) (aged 33) Dayton, Ohio
Cause of death	Tuberculosis
Resting place	Woodland Cemetery Dayton, Ohio
Nationality	American
Occupation	poet
Spouse	Alice Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an African American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Much of his popular work in his lifetime used a Negro dialect, which helped him become one of the first nationally-accepted African American writers. Much of his writing, however, does not use dialect; these more traditional poems have become of greater interest to scholars.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Dunbar was born in a home at 311 Howard Street in Dayton, Ohio on June 27, 1872.^[1] His parents had escaped from slavery in Kentucky; his father was a veteran of the American Civil War, having served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry Regiment. Dunbar was born six months into their marriage; their wedding was Christmas Eve, 1871.^[1]

Dunbar's parents, Joshua and Matilda, began having marital problems a few months after their son's birth. After the birth of her daughter, who was ignored by Joshua, Matilda took the children, including two from a previous marriage, and left him.^[2] Joshua died in 1884 when Dunbar was 12 years old.^[3]

Dunbar was the only African-American student during the years he attended Dayton's Central High School, and he participated actively as a student. During high school, he was both the editor of the school newspaper and class president, as well as the president of the school literary society. He wrote his first poem at age 6 and gave his first public recital at age 9. His mother Matilda assisted him in his schooling, having learned how to read expressly for that purpose. She often read the Bible with him and thought he might become a minister for the African Methodist Episcopal Church.^[4]

Writing career[link]

Dunbar's first professionally published poems were "Our Martyred Soldiers" and "On The River", published in Dayton's The Herald newspaper in 1888.^[3] In 1890 Dunbar wrote and edited Dayton's first weekly African-American newspaper, The Tattler, printed by the fledgling company of his high school acquaintances Wilbur and Orville Wright. The paper lasted only 6 weeks.^[5]

When his formal schooling ended in 1891, Dunbar took a job as an elevator operator, earning a salary of four dollars a week.^[3] The next year, Dunbar asked the Wrights to publish his dialect poems in book form, but the brothers did not have the facility to do so. Dunbar was directed to the United Brethren Publishing House which, in 1893, printed Dunbar's first collection of poetry, Oak and Ivy.^[5] Dunbar subsidized the printing of the book himself, though he earned back his investment in two weeks by selling copies personally,^[6] often to passengers on his elevator. The larger section of the book, the "Oak" section, consisted of traditional verse whereas the smaller section, the "Ivy", featured light poems written in dialect.^[7]

The work attracted the attention of James Whitcomb Riley, the popular "Hoosier Poet". Both Riley and Dunbar wrote poems in both standard English and dialect.

Despite frequently publishing poems and occasionally giving public readings, Dunbar had difficulty financially supporting himself and his mother. Many of his efforts were unpaid and he was a reckless spender, leaving him in debt by the mid-1890s.^[8]

On June 27, 1896, the novelist, editor, and critic William Dean Howells published a favorable review of Dunbar's second book, Majors and Minors. Howells's influence made Dunbar famous and brought national attention to his writing.^[9] Though he saw "honest thinking and true feeling" in Dunbar's traditional poems, he particularly praised Dunbar's dialect poems.^[10] With his new-found international literary fame, Dunbar collected his first two books into one volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life, which included an introduction by Howells.

Dunbar maintained a lifelong friendship with the Wrights. He was also associated with Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and Brand Whitlock (who was described as a close friend).^[11] He was honored with a ceremonial sword by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Later work[link]

1897 sketch by Norman B. Wood

Dunbar wrote a dozen books of poetry, four books of short stories, five novels, and a play. He also wrote lyrics for In Dahomey - the first musical written and performed entirely by African-Americans to appear on Broadway in 1903; the musical comedy successfully toured England and America over a period of four years - one of the more successful theatrical productions of its time.^[12] His essays and poems were published widely in the leading journals of the day. His work appeared in Harper's Weekly, the Saturday Evening Post, the Denver Post, Current Literature and a number of other publications. During his life, considerable emphasis was laid on the fact that Dunbar was of pure black descent.

Dunbar traveled to England in 1897 to recite his works on the London literary circuit. He met the young black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor who set some of his poems to music and who was influenced by Dunbar to use African and American Negro songs and tunes in future compositions.

Marriage and declining health[link]

After returning from England, Dunbar married Alice Ruth Moore on March 6, 1898, a teacher and poet from New Orleans who he had met three years earlier.^[13] Dunbar called her "the sweetest, smartest little girl I ever saw".^[14] A graduate of Straight University (now Dillard University), her most famous works include a short story entitled "Violets". She and her husband also wrote books of poetry as companion pieces. An account of their love, life and marriage was depicted in a play by Kathleen McGhee-Anderson titled Oak and Ivy.^[15]

Dunbar took a job at the Library of Congress in Washington in October 1897. He and his wife moved to Washington, D.C., in the LeDroit Park neighborhood. Under the urging of his wife, however, he soon left the job to focus on his writing, which he promoted through public readings.

In 1900, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and his doctors recommended drinking whisky to alleviate his symptoms. He moved to Colorado with his wife on the advice of his doctors. Dunbar and his wife separated in 1902, but they never divorced. Depression and declining health drove him to a dependence on alcohol, which further damaged his health. He moved back to Dayton to be with his mother in 1904. Dunbar died from tuberculosis on February 9, 1906, at age thirty-three.^[16] He was interred in the Woodland Cemetery in Dayton.^[17]

Literary style[link]

Dunbar's work is known for its colorful language and a conversational tone, with a brilliant rhetorical structure. These traits were well matched to the tune-writing ability of Carrie Jacobs-Bond (1862–1946), with whom he collaborated.^[18]

Use of dialect[link]

Much of Dunbar's work was authored in conventional English, while some was rendered in African-American dialect. Dunbar remained always suspicious that there was something demeaning about the marketability of dialect poems. One interviewer reported that Dunbar told him, "I am tired, so tired of dialect", though he is also quoted as saying, "my natural speech is dialect" and "my love is for the Negro pieces".^[19]

Though he credited William Dean Howells with promoting his early success, Dunbar was dismayed by his demand that he focus on dialect poetry. Angered that editors refused to print his more traditional poems, he accused Howells of "[doing] my irrevocable harm in the dictum he laid down regarding my dialect verse."^[20] Dunbar, however, was continuing a literary tradition that used Negro dialect; his predecessors included Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, and George Washington Cable.^[21]

Two brief examples of Dunbar's work, the first in standard English and the second in dialect, demonstrate the diversity of the poet's production:

(From "Dreams")

What dreams we have and how they fly

Like rosy clouds across the sky;

Of wealth, of fame, of sure success,

Of love that comes to cheer and bless;

And how they wither, how they fade,

The waning wealth, the jilting jade —

The fame that for a moment gleams,

Then flies forever, — dreams, ah — dreams!

(From "A Warm Day In Winter")

"Sunshine on de medders,

Greenness on de way;

Dat's de blessed reason

I sing all de day."

Look hyeah! What you axing'?

What meks me so merry?

'Spect to see me sighin'

W'en hit's wa'm in Febawary?

Critical response and legacy[link]

Dunbar on 1975 U.S. postage stamp.

Dunbar became the first African-American poet to earn nation-wide distinction and acceptance. The New York Times called him "a true singer of the people — white or black."^[22] In his preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry (1931) writer and activist James Weldon Johnson criticized Dunbar's dialect poems for fostering stereotypes of blacks as comical or pathetic and reinforcing the restriction that blacks write only scenes of plantation life.^[19]

Writer Maya Angelou titled her autobiographical book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) after a line from Dunbar's poem "Sympathy" at the suggestion of jazz musician and activist Abbey Lincoln.^[23] Angelou named Dunbar an inspiration for her "writing ambition"^[24] and uses his imagery of a caged bird like a chained slave throughout much of her writings.^[25]

In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Paul Laurence Dunbar on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.^[26]

Dunbar's vaudeville song "Who Dat Say Chicken in Dis Crowd" may have influenced the development of "Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say gonna beat dem Saints?", the New Orleans Saints' chant.^[27]

List of works[link]

• Oak and Ivy (1892)^[28]
• Majors and Minors (1896)^[28]
• Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896)^[28]
• Folks from Dixie (1898)^[28]
• The Strength of Gideon (1900)^[28]
• In Old Plantation Days (1903)^[28]
• The Heart of Happy Hollow (1904)^[28]
• Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905)^[28]

See also[link]

	Poetry portal
	Biography portal

• "Ode to Ethiopia", one poem in the collection Lyrics of Lowly Life.
• African American literature
• Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park
  • Paul Laurence Dunbar House
• Samuel Coleridge-Taylor black composer

Places named in his honor

• Dunbar Creative and Performing Arts Magnet School (Mobile, Alabama)
• Dunbar High School (various cities)
• Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (Fort Worth, Texas) (Fort Worth, {Stop Six}, Texas)
• Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (Lexington, Kentucky)
• Dunbar Hospital (Detroit, Michigan)
• Dunbar Elementary School (Atlanta, Georgia)
• Dunbar Magnet Middle School (Little Rock, Arkansas)
• Dunbar Middle School (Lynchburg, Virginia)
• Paul Laurence Dunbar Library at Wright State University (Dayton, Ohio)
• Paul Laurence Dunbar J.H.S 120/M.S. 301 (Bronx, NY)
• Paul Laurence Dunbar Lancaster-Keist Branch Library (Dallas, Texas)
• Dunbar High (Fort Myers, Florida)
• The Dunbar Hotel (Los Angeles, California)

http://dhs.leeschools.net/

References[link]

Notes[link]

Works cited[link]

• Alexander, Eleanor C. Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore. New York: New York University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8147-0696-7.
• Best, Felton O. Crossing the Color Line: A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872-1906. Kendall/Hunt Pub. Co., 1996. ISBN 0-7872-2234-8.
• Nettels, Elsa. Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America. University Press of Kentucky, 1988. ISBN 0-8131-1629-5.
• Wagner, Jean. Black Poets of the United States: From Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston Hughes. University of Illinois Press, 1973. ISBN 0-252-00341-1.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Paul Laurence Dunbar

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Paul Laurence Dunbar

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Paul Laurence Dunbar

• Paul Laurence Dunbar: Online Resources, from the Library of Congress
• Dunbar House state historical site, by the Ohio Historical Society
• Dunbar house is also part of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park which includes both the Wright Brothers bicycle shop and Dunbar's home (along with a bicycle the Wrights gave him).
• Wright State University's Paul Laurence Dunbar Library special collection
• University of Dayton's Paul Laurence Dunbar website
• Paul Laurence Dunbar Toledo's Attic Exhibit, contains an essay written by Dr. Timothy Messer-Kruse, then of the University of Toledo, as well as a short history of his writing career.
• Works by Paul Laurence Dunbar at Project Gutenberg
• The Life and Works of Paul Lawrence Dunbar by Lida Keck Wiggins, issued by Winston-Derek in 1992 ISBN 1-55523-473-9
• Dunbar's Legacy of Language, a 2006 NPR story marking the 100th anniversary of Dunbar's death; included is a poetry reading.
• Paul Laurence Dunbar at Find-A-Grave.
• Modern American Poetry
• Academy of American Poets
• Paul Laurence Dunbar public domain audiobooks from LibriVox

Offenbach in the 1860s

Jacques Offenbach (20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. The Tales of Hoffman remains part of the standard opera repertory.

Born in Cologne, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical theatre. Finding the management of Paris's Opéra-Comique company uninterested in staging his works, in 1855 he leased a small theatre in the Champs-Élysées. There he presented a series of his own small-scale pieces, many of which became popular.

In 1858, Offenbach produced his first full-length operetta, Orphée aux enfers ("Orpheus in the Underworld"), which was exceptionally well received and has remained one of his most played works. During the 1860s, he produced at least 18 full-length operettas, as well as more one-act pieces. His works from this period included La belle Hélène (1864), La vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) and La Périchole (1868). The risqué humour (often about sexual intrigue) and mostly gentle satiric barbs in these pieces, together with Offenbach's facility for melody, made them internationally known, and translated versions were successful in Vienna, London and elsewhere in Europe.

Offenbach became associated with the Second French Empire of Napoleon III; the emperor and his court were genially satirised in many of Offenbach's operettas. Napoleon personally granted him French citizenship and the Légion d'Honneur. With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Offenbach found himself out of favour in Paris because of his imperial connections and his German birth. He remained successful in Vienna and London, however. He re-established himself in Paris during the 1870s, with revivals of some of his earlier favourites and a series of new works, and undertook a popular U.S. tour. In his last years he strove to finish The Tales of Hoffmann, but died before the premiere of the opera, which has entered the standard repertory in versions completed or edited by other musicians.

Life and career[link]

Early years[link]

Offenbach was born Jacob or Jakob Offenbach^{[n 1]} in the German city of Cologne, which was then a part of Prussia.^{[11][n 2]} His birthplace in the Großen Griechenmarkt was a short distance from the square that is now named after him, the Offenbachplatz.^[4] He was the second son and the seventh of ten children of Isaac Juda Offenbach né Eberst (1779–1850) and his wife Marianne, née Rindskopf (c. 1783–1840).^[12] Isaac, who came from a musical family, had abandoned his original trade as a bookbinder and earned an itinerant living as a cantor in synagogues and playing the violin in cafés.^[13] He was generally known as "der Offenbacher", after his native town, Offenbach am Main, and in 1808 he officially adopted Offenbach as a surname.^{[n 3]} In 1816 he settled in Cologne, where he became established as a teacher, giving lessons in singing, violin, flute and guitar, and composing both religious and secular music.^[8]

When Jacob was six years old, his father taught him to play the violin; within two years the boy was composing songs and dances, and at the age of nine he took up the cello.^[8] As he was by then the permanent cantor of the local synagogue, Isaac could afford to pay for his son to take lessons from the well-known cellist Bernhard Breuer. Three years later, the biographer Gabriel Grovlez records, the boy was giving performances of his own compositions, "the technical difficulties of which terrified his master", Breuer.^[15] Together with his brother Julius (violin) and sister Isabella (piano), Jacob played in a trio at local dance halls, inns and cafés, performing popular dance music and operatic arrangements.^{[16][n 4]} In 1833, Isaac decided that the two most musically talented of his children, Julius (then aged 18) and Jacob (14) needed to leave the provincial musical scene of Cologne to study in Paris. With generous support from local music lovers and the municipal orchestra, with whom they gave a farewell concert on 9 October, the two young musicians, accompanied by their father, made the four-day journey to Paris in November 1833.^[17]

Isaac had been given letters of introduction to the director of the Paris Conservatoire, Luigi Cherubini, but he needed all his eloquence to persuade Cherubini even to give Jacob an audition. The boy's age and nationality were both obstacles to admission.^{[n 5]} Cherubini had several years earlier refused the 12-year-old Franz Liszt admission on similar grounds,^[19] but he eventually agreed to hear the young Offenbach play. He listened to his playing and stopped him, saying, "Enough, young man, you are now a pupil of this Conservatoire."^[20] Julius was also admitted. Both brothers adopted French forms of their names, Julius becoming Jules and Jacob becoming Jacques.^[21]

Isaac hoped to secure permanent employment in Paris but failed to do so and returned to Cologne.^[20] Before leaving, he found a number of pupils for Jules; the modest earnings from those lessons, supplemented by fees earned by both brothers as members of synagogue choirs, supported them during their studies. At the conservatoire, Jules was a diligent student; he graduated and became a successful violin teacher and conductor, and led his younger brother's orchestra for several years.^[22] By contrast, Jacques was bored by academic study and left after a year. The conservatoire's roll of students notes against his name "Struck off on the 2 December 1834 (left of his own free will)".^{[n 6]}

Cello virtuoso[link]

Having left the conservatoire, Offenbach was free from the stern academicism of Cherubini's curriculum, but as the biographer James Harding writes, "he was free, also, to starve."^[25] He secured a few temporary jobs in theatre orchestras before gaining a permanent appointment in 1835 as a cellist at the Opéra-Comique. He was no more serious there than he had been at the conservatoire, and regularly had his pay docked for playing pranks during performances; on one occasion, he and the principal cellist played alternate notes of the printed score, and on another they sabotaged some of their colleagues' music stands to make them collapse in mid-performance.^[1] Nevertheless his earnings from his orchestral work enabled him to take lessons with the celebrated cellist Louis-Pierre Norblin.^[26] He made a favourable impression on the composer and conductor Fromental Halévy, who gave him lessons in composition and orchestration and wrote to Isaac Offenbach in Cologne that the young man was going to be a great composer.^[27] Some of Offenbach's early compositions were programmed by the fashionable conductor Louis Antoine Jullien.^[28] Offenbach and another young composer Friedrich von Flotow collaborated on a series of works for cello and piano.^[29] Although Offenbach's ambition was to compose for the stage, he was at this point in his career unable to gain an entrée to Parisian theatre; with Flotow's help, he built a reputation composing for and playing in the fashionable salons of Paris.^[30]

Offenbach as a young cello virtuoso, drawing by Alexandre Laemlein from 1850

Among the salons at which Offenbach most frequently appeared was that of the comtesse de Vaux. There he met Hérminie d'Alcain (1827–1887), the daughter of a Carlist general.^[31] They fell in love, but he was not yet in a financial position to propose marriage.^[32] To extend his fame and earning power beyond Paris, he undertook tours of France and Germany. Among those with whom he performed were Anton Rubinstein and, in a concert in Offenbach's native Cologne, Liszt.^[4] In 1844, probably through English family connections of Hérminie,^[33] he embarked on a tour of England. There, he was immediately engaged to appear with some of the most famous musicians of the day, including Mendelssohn, Joseph Joachim, Michael Costa and Julius Benedict.^[32] The Era wrote of his debut performance in London, "His execution and taste excited both wonder and pleasure, the genius he exhibited amounting to absolute inspiration."^[34] The British press reported a triumphant royal command performance; The Illustrated London News wrote, "Herr Jacques Offenbach, the astonishing Violoncellist, performed on Thursday evening at Windsor before the Emperor of Russia, the King of Saxony, Queen Victoria, and Prince Albert with great success."^{[35][n 7]} The use of "Herr" rather than "Monsieur", reflecting the fact that Offenbach remained a Prussian citizen, was common to all the British press coverage of Offenbach's 1844 tour.^[37] The ambiguity of his nationality sometimes caused him difficulty in later life.^[38]

Offenbach returned to Paris with his reputation and his bank balance both much enhanced. The last remaining obstacle to his marriage to Hérminie was the difference in their professed religions; he converted to Roman Catholicism, with the comtesse de Vaux acting as his sponsor. Isaac Offenbach's views on his son's conversion from Judaism are unknown.^[39] The wedding took place on 14 August 1844; the bride was 17 years old, and the bridegroom was 25.^[39] The marriage was lifelong, and happy, despite some extramarital dalliances on Offenbach's part.^{[40][n 8]} After Offenbach's death, a friend said that Hérminie "gave him courage, shared his ordeals and comforted him always with tenderness and devotion".^[42]

The composer-cellist caricatured

Returning to the familiar Paris salons, Offenbach quietly shifted the emphasis of his work from being a cellist who also composed to being a composer who played the cello.^[43] He had already published many compositions, and some of them had sold well, but now he began to write, perform and produce musical burlesques as part of his salon presentations.^[44] He amused the comtesse de Vaux's 200 guests with a parody of Félicien David's currently fashionable Le désert, and in April 1846 gave a concert at which seven operatic items of his own composition were premiered before an audience that included leading music critics.^[44] After some encouragement and some temporary setbacks, he seemed on the verge of breaking into theatrical composition when Paris was convulsed by the 1848 revolution, which swept Louis Philippe from the throne and led to serious bloodshed in the streets of the capital.^[45] Offenbach hastily took Hérminie and their recently born daughter to join his family in Cologne. He thought it politic to revert temporarily to the name Jacob.^[46]

Returning to Paris in February 1849, Offenbach found the grand salons closed down. He went back to working as a cellist, and occasional conductor, at the Opéra-Comique, but was not encouraged in his aspirations to compose.^[47] His talents had been noted by the director of the Comédie Française, Arsène Houssaye, who appointed him musical director of the theatre, with a brief to enlarge and improve the orchestra.^[48] Offenbach composed songs and incidental music for eleven classical and modern dramas for the Comédie Française in the early 1850s. Some of his songs became very popular, and he gained valuable experience in writing for the theatre. Houssaye later wrote that Offenbach had done wonders for his theatre.^[49] The management of the Opéra-Comique, however, remained uninterested in commissioning him to compose for its stage.^[50] The composer Debussy later wrote that the musical establishment could not cope with Offenbach's irony, which exposed the "false, overblown quality" of the operas they favoured – "the great art at which one was not allowed to smile".^[51]

Bouffes-Parisiens, Champs-Élysées[link]

Between 1853 and 1855, Offenbach wrote three one-act operettas and managed to have them staged in Paris.^{[n 9]} They were all well received, but the authorities of the Opéra-Comique remained unmoved. Offenbach found more encouragement from the composer, singer and impresario Florimond Ronger, known professionally as Hervé. At his theatre, the Folies-Nouvelles, which had opened the previous year, Hervé pioneered French light comic opera, or "opérette".^[15][52] In The Musical Quarterly, Martial Teneo and Theodore Baker wrote, "Without the example set by Hervé, Offenbach might perhaps never have become the musician who penned Orphée aux Enfers, La belle Hélène, and so many other triumphant works."^[53] Offenbach approached Hervé, who agreed to present a new one-act operetta with words by Jules Moinaux and music by Offenbach, called Oyayaye ou La reine des îles.^{[n 10]} It was presented on 26 June 1855 and was well received. Offenbach's biographer Peter Gammond describes it as "a charming piece of nonsense".^[57] The piece depicts a double-bass player, played by Hervé, shipwrecked on a cannibal island, who after several perilous encounters with the female chief of the cannibals makes his escape using his double-bass as a boat.^[54] Offenbach pressed ahead with plans to present his works himself at his own theatre^[57] and to abandon further thoughts of acceptance by the Opéra-Comique.^{[n 11]}

Offenbach had chosen his theatre, the Salle Lacaze in the Champs-Élysées.^[60] The location and the timing were ideal for him. Paris was about to be filled between May and November with visitors from France and abroad for the 1855 Great Exhibition. The Salle Lacaze was next to the exhibition site. He later wrote:

In the Champs-Élysées, there was a little theatre to let, built for [the magician] Lacaze but closed for many years. I knew that the Exhibition of 1855 would bring many people into this locality. By May, I had found twenty supporters and on 15 June I secured the lease. Twenty days later, I gathered my librettists and I opened the "Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens".^[61]

The description of the theatre as "little" was accurate: it could only hold an audience of 300.^[62] It was therefore well suited to the tiny casts permitted under the prevailing licensing laws: Offenbach was limited to three speaking (or singing) characters in any piece.^{[n 12]} With such small forces, full-length works were out of the question, and Offenbach, like Hervé, presented evenings of several one-act pieces.^[64] The opening of the theatre was a frantic rush, with less than a month between the issue of the licence and the opening night on 5 July 1855.^[65] During this period Offenbach had to "equip the theatre, recruit actors, orchestra and staff, find authors to write material for the opening programme – and compose the music."^[64] Among those he recruited at short notice was Ludovic Halévy, the nephew of Offenbach's early mentor Fromental Halévy. Ludovic was a respectable civil servant with a passion for the theatre and a gift for dialogue and verse. While maintaining his civil service career he went on to collaborate (sometimes under discreet pseudonyms) with Offenbach in 21 works over the next 24 years.^[4]

Halévy wrote the libretto for one of the pieces in the opening programme, but the most popular work of the evening had words by Moinaux. Les deux aveugles, "The Two Blind Men" is a comedy about two beggars feigning blindness. During rehearsals there had been some concern that the public might judge it to be in poor taste,^[66] but it was not only the hit of the season in Paris: it was soon playing successfully in Vienna, London and elsewhere.^[67] Another success that summer was Le violoneux, which made a star of Hortense Schneider in her first role for Offenbach. Aged 22, when she auditioned for him, she was engaged on the spot. From 1855 she was a key member of his companies through much of his career.^[67]

The Champs-Élysées in 1855 were not yet the grand avenue laid out by Baron Haussmann in the 1860s, but an unpaved allée.^[65] The public who were flocking to Offenbach's theatre in the summer and autumn of 1855 could not be expected to venture there in the depths of a Parisian winter. He cast about for a suitable venue and found the Théâtre des Jeunes Élèves, known also as the Salle Choiseul or the Salle Comte,^[15] in central Paris. He entered into partnership with its proprietor and moved the Bouffes-Parisiens there for the winter season. The company returned to the Salle Lacaze for the 1856, 1857, and 1859 summer seasons, performing at the Salle Choiseul in the winter.^[68] Legislation enacted in March 1861 prevented the company from using both theatres, and appearances at the Salle Lacaze were discontinued.^[69]

Salle Choiseul[link]

Offenbach's first piece for the company's new home was Ba-ta-clan (December 1855), a well-received piece of mock-oriental frivolity, to a libretto by Halévy.^[70] He followed it with 15 more one-act operettas over the next three years.^[4] They were all for the small casts permitted under his licence, although at the Salle Choiseul he was granted an increase from three to four singers.^[65]

Under Offenbach's management, the Bouffes-Parisiens staged works by many composers. These included new pieces by Leon Gastinel and Léo Delibes. When Offenbach asked Rossini's permission to revive his comedy Il signor Bruschino, Rossini replied that he was pleased to be able to do anything for "the Mozart of the Champs-Élysées".^{[n 13]} Offenbach revered Mozart above all other composers. He had an ambition to present Mozart's neglected one-act comic opera Der Schauspieldirektor at the Bouffes-Parisiens, and he acquired the score from Vienna.^[65] With a text translated and adapted by Léon Battu and Ludovic Halévy, he presented it during the Mozart centenary celebrations in May 1856 as L'impresario; it was popular with the public^[79] and also greatly enhanced the critical and social standing of the Bouffes-Parisiens.^[80] By command of the emperor, Napoleon III, the company performed at the Tuileries palace shortly after the first performance of the Mozart piece.^[65]

In a long article in Le Figaro in July 1856, Offenbach traced the history of comic opera. He declared that the first work worthy to be called opéra-comique was Philidor's 1759 Blaise le savetier, and he described the gradual divergence of Italian and French notions of comic opera, with verve, imagination and gaiety from Italian composers, and cleverness, common sense, good taste and wit from the French composers.^{[n 14]} He concluded that comic opera had become too grand and inflated. His disquisition was a preliminary to the announcement of an open competition for aspiring composers.^[82] A jury of French composers and playwrights including Daniel Auber, Fromental Halévy, Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod and Eugène Scribe considered 78 entries; the five short-listed entrants were all asked to set a libretto, Le docteur miracle, written by Ludovic Halévy and Léon Battu.^[83] The joint winners were Georges Bizet and Charles Lecocq. Bizet became, and remained, a devoted friend of Offenbach. Lecocq and Offenbach took a dislike to one another, and their subsequent rivalry was not altogether friendly.^[82][84]

Although the Bouffes-Parisiens played to full houses, the theatre was constantly on the verge of running out of money, principally because of what his biographer Alexander Faris calls "Offenbach's incorrigible extravagance as a manager".^[80] An earlier biographer, André Martinet, wrote, "Jacques spent money without counting. Whole lengths of velvet were swallowed up in the auditorium; costumes devoured width after width of satin."^{[n 15]} Moreover, Offenbach was personally generous and liberally hospitable.^[85] To boost the company's finances, a London season was organised in 1857, with half the company remaining in Paris to play at the Salle Choiseul and the other half performing at the St James's Theatre in the West End of London.^[65] The visit was a success, but did not cause the sensation that Offenbach's later works did in London.^[86]

[edit] Orphée aux enfers

Poster for the first production of Orpheus in the Underworld

In 1858, the government lifted the licensing restrictions on the number of performers, and Offenbach was able to present more ambitious works. His first full-length operetta, Orphée aux enfers ("Orpheus in the Underworld"), was presented in October 1858. Offenbach, as usual, spent freely on the production, with scenery by Gustave Doré, lavish costumes, a cast of twenty principals, and a large chorus and orchestra.^[87]

As the company was particularly short of money following an abortive season in Berlin, a big success was urgently needed. At first the production seemed merely to be a modest success. It soon benefited from an outraged review by Jules Janin, the critic of the Journal des Débats; he condemned the piece for profanity and irreverence (ostensibly to Roman mythology but in reality to Napoleon and his government, generally seen as the targets of its satire).^[88] Offenbach and his librettist Hector Crémieux seized on this free publicity, and joined in a lively public debate in the columns of the Parisian daily newspaper Le Figaro.^[89] Janin's indignation made the public agog to see the work, and the box office takings were prodigious. Among those who wanted to see the satire of the emperor was the emperor himself, who commanded a performance in April 1860.^[89] Despite many great successes during the rest of Offenbach's career, Orphée aux enfers remained his most popular. Gammond lists among the reasons for its success, "the sweeping waltzes" reminiscent of Vienna but with a new French flavour, the patter songs, and "above all else, of course, the can-can which had led a naughty life in low places since the 1830s or thereabouts and now became a polite fashion, as uninhibited as ever."^[90]

In the 1859 season, the Bouffes-Parisiens presented new works by composers including Flotow, Camille Erlanger, Alphonse Varney, Léo Delibes, and Offenbach himself. Of Offenbach's new pieces, Geneviève de Brabant though initially only a mild success, was later revised and gained much popularity where the duet of the two gendarmes became a favourite number in England and France and the basis for the Marines' Hymn in the U.S.^[91]

Early 1860s[link]

The 1860s were Offenbach's most successful decade. At the beginning of 1860, he was granted French citizenship by the personal command of Napoleon III,^[92] and the following year he was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur; this appointment scandalised those haughty and exclusive members of the musical establishment who resented such an honour for a composer of popular light opera.^[93] Offenbach began the decade with his only stand-alone ballet, Le papillon ("The Butterfly"), produced at the Opéra in 1860. It achieved what was then a successful run of 42 performances, without, as the biographer Andrew Lamb says, "giving him any greater acceptance in more respectable circles."^[4] Among other operettas in the same year, he finally had a piece presented by the Opéra-Comique, the three-act Barkouf. It was not a success; its plot revolved around a dog, and Offenbach attempted canine imitations in his music. Neither the public nor the critics were impressed, and the piece survived for only seven performances.

Apart from that setback, Offenbach flourished in the 1860s, with successes greatly outnumbering failures. In 1861 he led the company in a summer season in Vienna. Encountering packed houses and enthusiastic reviews, Offenbach found Vienna much to his liking. He even reverted, for a single evening, to his old role as a cello virtuoso at a command performance before Emperor Franz Joseph.^[94] That success was followed by a failure in Berlin. Offenbach, though born a Prussian citizen, observed, "Prussia never does anything to make those of our nationality happy."^{[n 16]} He and the company hastened back to Paris.^[94] Meanwhile, among his operettas that season were the full-length Le pont des soupirs and the one-act M. Choufleuri restera chez lui le . . ..^[95]

In 1862, Offenbach's only son, Auguste, was born, the last of five children. In the same year, Offenbach resigned as director of the Bouffes-Parisiens, handing the post over to Alphonse Varney. He continued to write most of his works for the company, with the exception of occasional pieces for the summer season at Bad Ems.^{[n 17]} Despite problems with the libretto, Offenbach completed a serious opera in 1864, Die Rheinnixen, a hotchpotch of romantic and mythological themes. The opera was presented with substantial cuts at the Vienna Court Opera and in Cologne in 1865. It was not given again until 2002, when it was finally performed in its entirety. Since then it has been given several productions.^[96] It contained one number, the "Elfenchor", described by the critic Eduard Hanslick as "lovely, luring and sensuous",^[97] which Offenbach later adapted as the Barcarolle in The Tales of Hoffmann.^[98] After December 1864, Offenbach wrote less frequently for the Bouffes-Parisiens, and many of his new works premiered at larger theatres.^[4]

Later 1860s[link]

Between 1864 and 1868, Offenbach wrote four of the operettas for which he is chiefly remembered: La belle Hélène (1864), La vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) and La Périchole (1868). Halévy was joined as librettist for all of them by Henri Meilhac. Offenbach, who called them "Meil" and "Hal",^[99] said of this trinity: "Je suis sans doute le Père, mais chacun des deux est mon Fils et plein d'Esprit,"^[100] a play on words loosely translated as "I am certainly the Father, but together they are the Son and the Wholly Spirited".^{[n 18]}

For La belle Hélène, Offenbach secured Hortense Schneider to play the title role. Since her early success in his short operas, she had become a leading star of the French musical stage. She now commanded large fees and was notoriously temperamental, but Offenbach was adamant that no other singer could match her as Hélène.^[101] Rehearsals for the premiere at the Théâtre des Variétés were tempestuous, with Schneider and the principal mezzo-soprano feuding, the censor fretting about the satire of the imperial court, and the manager of the theatre attempting to rein in Offenbach's extravagance with production expenses.^[101] Once again the success of the piece was inadvertently assured by the critic Janin; his scandalised notice was strongly countered by liberal critics and the ensuing publicity again brought the public flocking.^[102]

Barbe-bleue was a success in early 1866 and was quickly reproduced elsewhere. La vie parisienne later in the same year was a new departure for Offenbach and his librettists; for the first time in a large-scale piece they chose a modern setting, instead of disguising their satire under a classical cloak. It needed no accidental boost from Janin but was an instant and prolonged success with Parisian audiences, although its very Parisian themes made it less popular abroad. Gammond describes the libretto as "almost worthy of [W.S.] Gilbert", and Offenbach's score as "certainly his best so far".^[103] The piece starred Zulma Bouffar, who began an affair with the composer that lasted until at least 1875.^[104]

In 1867, Offenbach had his greatest success. The premiere of La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, a satire on militarism,^[105] took place two days after the opening of the Paris Exhibition, an even greater international draw than the 1855 exhibition which had helped him launch his composing career.^[106] The Parisian public and the foreign visitors flocked to the new operetta. The foreign royalty who saw the piece included the King of Prussia accompanied by his chief minister, Otto von Bismarck. Halévy, with his experience as a senior civil servant, saw more clearly than most the looming threat from Prussia; he wrote in his diary, "Bismarck is helping to double our takings. This time it's war we're laughing at, and war is at our gates."^[107] La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein was followed quickly by a series of successful pieces: Robinson Crusoé, Geneviève de Brabant (revised version; both 1867), Le château à Toto, Le pont des soupirs (revised version) and L'île de Tulipatan (all in 1868).

In October 1868, La Périchole marked a transition in Offenbach's style, with less exuberant satire and more human romantic interest.^[108] Lamb calls it Offenbach's "most charming" score.^[109] There was some critical grumbling at the change, but the piece, with Schneider in the lead, did good business.^[110] It was quickly produced in Europe and both North and South America.^[111][112] Of the pieces that followed it at the end of the decade, Les brigands (1869) was another work that leaned more to romantic comic opera than to opéra-bouffe. It was well received, but has not subsequently been revived as often as Offenbach's best-known operettas.^[108]

War and aftermath[link]

Offenbach returned hurriedly from Ems and Wiesbaden before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He then went to his home in Étretat and arranged for his family to move to the safety of San Sebastián in northern Spain, joining them shortly afterwards.^[113][114] Having risen to fame under Napoleon III, satirised him, and been rewarded by him, Offenbach was universally associated with the old régime: he was known as "the mocking-bird of the Second Empire".^[115] When the empire fell in the wake of Prussia's crushing victory at Sedan (1870), Offenbach's music was suddenly out of favour. France was swept by violently anti-German sentiments, and despite his French citizenship and Légion d'honneur, his birth and upbringing in Cologne made him suspect. His operettas were now frequently vilified as the embodiment of everything superficial and worthless in Napoleon III's régime.^[38] La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein was banned in France because of its antimilitarist satire.^[116]

Although his Parisian audience deserted him, Offenbach had by now become highly popular in England. John Hollingshead of the Gaiety Theatre presented Offenbach's operettas to large and enthusiastic audiences.^[117] Between 1870 and 1872, the Gaiety produced 15 of his works. At the Royalty Theatre, Richard D'Oyly Carte presented La Périchole in 1875.^[118] In Vienna, too, Offenbach works were regularly produced. While the war and its aftermath ravaged Paris, the composer supervised Viennese productions and travelled to England as the guest of the Prince of Wales.^[119]

By the end of 1871 life in Paris had returned to normal, and Offenbach ended his voluntary exile. His new works Le roi Carotte (1872) and La jolie parfumeuse (1873) were modestly profitable, but lavish revivals of his earlier successes did better business. He decided to go back into theatre management and took over the Théâtre de la Gaîté in July 1873.^[120] His spectacular revival of Orphée aux enfers there was highly profitable; an attempt to repeat that success with a new, lavish version of Geneviève de Brabant proved less popular.^[121] Along with the costs of extravagant productions, collaboration with the dramatist Victorien Sardou culminated in financial disaster. An expensive production of Sardou's La haine in 1874, with incidental music by Offenbach, failed to attract the public to the Gaîté, and Offenbach was forced to sell his interests in the Gaîté and to mortgage future royalties.^[122]

In 1876 a successful tour of the United States in connection with its Centennial Exhibition enabled Offenbach to recover some of his losses and pay his debts. Beginning with a concert at Gilmore's Garden before a crowd of 8,000 people, he gave a series of more than 40 concerts in New York and Philadelphia. To circumvent a Philadelphia law forbidding entertainments on Sundays, he disguised his operetta numbers as liturgical pieces and advertised a "Grand Sacred Concert by M. Offenbach". "Dis-moi, Vénus" from La belle Hélène became a "Litanie", and other equally secular numbers were billed as "Prière" or "Hymne".^[123] The local authorities were not deceived, and the concert did not take place.^[124] At Booth's Theatre, New York, Offenbach conducted La vie parisienne^[125] and his recent (1873) La jolie parfumeuse.^[4] He returned to France in July 1876, with profits that were handsome but not spectacular.^[53]

Offenbach's later operettas enjoyed renewed popularity in France, especially Madame Favart (1878), which featured a fantasy plot about the real-life French actress Marie Justine Favart, and La fille du tambour-major (1879), which was the most successful of his operettas of the 1870s.^[126]

Last years[link]

Profitable though La fille du tambour-major was, composing it left Offenbach less time to work on his cherished project, the creation of a successful serious opera. Since the beginning of 1877, he had been working when he could on a piece based on a stage play, Les contes fantastiques d'Hoffmann, by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. Offenbach had suffered from gout since the 1860s, often being carried into the theatre in a chair. Now in failing health, he was conscious of his own mortality and wished passionately to live long enough to complete the opera Les contes d'Hoffmann ("The Tales of Hoffmann"). He was heard saying to Kleinzach, his dog, "I would give everything I have to be at the première".^[127] However, Offenbach did not live to finish the piece. He left the vocal score substantially complete and had made a start on the orchestration. Ernest Guiraud, a family friend, assisted by Offenbach's 18-year-old son Auguste, completed the orchestration, making significant changes as well as the substantial cuts demanded by the Opéra-Comique's director, Carvalho.^{[128][n 19]} The opera was first seen at the Opéra-Comique on 10 February 1881; Guiraud added recitatives for the Vienna premiere, in December 1881, and other versions were made later.^[128]

Offenbach died in Paris in 1880 at the age of 61. His cause of death was certified as heart failure brought on by acute gout. He was given a state funeral; The Times wrote, "The crowd of distinguished men that accompanied him on his last journey amid the general sympathy of the public shows that the late composer was reckoned among the masters of his art."^[129] He is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery.

Works[link]

In The Musical Times, Mark Lubbock wrote in 1957:

Offenbach's music is as individually characteristic as that of Delius, Grieg or Puccini – together with range and variety. He could write straightforward "singing" numbers like Paris's song in La Belle Hélène, "Au mont Ida trois déesses"; comic songs like General Boum's "Piff Paff Pouf" and the ridiculous ensemble at the servants' ball in La Vie Parisienne, "Votre habit a craqué dans le dos". He was a specialist at writing music that had a rapturous, hysterical quality. The famous can-can from Orphée aux Enfers has it, and so has the finale of the servants' party … which ends with the delirious song "Tout tourne, tout danse'". Then, as a contrast, he could compose songs of a simplicity, grace and beauty like the Letter Song from La Périchole, "Chanson de Fortunio", and the Grand Duchess's tender love song to Fritz: "Dites-lui qu'on l'a remarqué distingué".^[130]

Among other well-known Offenbach numbers are the Doll Song, "Les oiseaux dans la charmille" (The Tales of Hoffmann); "Voici le sabre de mon père" and "Ah! Que j'aime les militaires" (La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein); and "Tu n'es pas beau" in La Périchole, which Lamb notes was Offenbach's last major song for Hortense Schneider.^{[131][n 20]}

Operettas[link]

By his own reckoning, Offenbach composed more than 100 operas.^{[133][n 21]} Both the number and the noun are open to question: some works were so extensively revised that he evidently counted the revised versions as new, and commentators generally refer to all but a few of his stage works as operettas, rather than operas. Offenbach reserved the term opérette (English: operetta)^{[n 22]} or opérette bouffe for some of his one-act works, more often using the term opéra-bouffe for his full-length ones (though there are a number of one- and two-act examples of this type). It was only with the further development of the Operette genre in Vienna after 1870 that the French term opérette began to be used for works longer than one act.^[136] Offenbach also used the term opéra-comique for at least 24 of his works in either one, two or three acts.^[137]

Offenbach's earliest operettas were one-act pieces for small casts. More than 30 of these were presented before his first full-scale "opéra bouffon", Orphée aux enfers, in 1858, and he composed over 20 more of them during the rest of his career.^[4][138] Lamb, following the precedent of Henseler's 1930 study of the composer, divides the one-act pieces into five categories: "(i) country idylls; (ii) urban operettas; (iii) military operettas; (iv) farces; and (v) burlesques or parodies."^[139] Following the success of Orphée aux enfers, Offenbach enjoyed his greatest success in the 1860s. As throughout his composing career, he produced a large number of works, some of which caught the public fancy more than others. Most of his greatest successes from the decade have remained among his best known: La belle Hélène (1864), La vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), and La Périchole (1868).^[4] In Offenbach's last decade, he took note of a change in public taste: a simpler, more romantic style was now preferred. Harding writes that Lecocq had successfully moved away from satire and parody, returning to "the genuine spirit of opéra-comique and its peculiarly French gaiety."^[140] Offenbach followed suit in a series of 20 operettas; the musician and writer Antonio de Almeida names the finest of these as La fille du tambour-major (1879).^[126]

Texts and word setting

The first ideas for plots usually came from Offenbach, with his librettists working on lines agreed with him. Lamb writes, "In this respect Offenbach was both well served and skilful at discovering talent. Like Sullivan, and unlike Johann Strauss II, he was consistently blessed with workable subjects and genuinely witty librettos."^[4] He took advantage of the rhythmic flexibility of the French language, but sometimes took this to extremes, forcing words into unnatural stresses.^[141] Harding comments that he "wrought much violence on the French language".^[140] A frequent characteristic of Offenbach's word setting was the nonsensical repetition of isolated syllables of words for comic effect; an example is the quintet for the kings in La belle Hélène: "Je suis l'époux de la reine/Poux de la reine/Poux de la reine" and "Le roi barbu qui s'avance/Bu qui s'avance/Bu qui s'avance."^{[n 23]}

Musical structure

In general, Offenbach followed simple, established forms. His melodies are usually short and unvaried in their basic rhythm, rarely, in Hughes's words, escaping "the despotism of the four-bar phrase".^[142] In modulation Offenbach was similarly cautious; he rarely switched a melody to a remote or unexpected key, and kept mostly to a tonic–dominant–subdominant pattern.^[143] Within these conventional limits, he employed greater resource in his varied use of rhythm; in a single number he would contrast rapid patter for one singer with a broad, smooth phrase for another, illustrating their different characters.^[143] Similarly, he often switched quickly between major and minor keys, effectively contrasting characters or situations.^[144] When he wished to, Offenbach could use unconventional techniques, such as the leitmotiv, used throughout to accompany the eponymous Docteur Ox (1877)^[145] and to parody Wagner in La carnaval des revues (1860).^[146]

Orchestration

In his early pieces for the Bouffes-Parisiens, the size of the orchestra pit had restricted Offenbach to an orchestra of 16 players.^[147] He composed for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, piston, trombone, timpani and percussion and a small string section of seven players.^[148] After moving to the Salle Choiseul he had an orchestra of 30 players.^[148] The musicologist and Offenbach specialist Jean-Christophe Keck notes that when larger orchestras were available, either in bigger Paris theatres or in Vienna or elsewhere, Offenbach would compose, or rearrange existing music, accordingly. Surviving scores show his instrumentation for additional wind and brass, and even extra percussion. When they were available he wrote for cor anglais, harp, and, exceptionally, Keck records, an ophicleide (Le Papillon), tubular bells (Le carnaval des revues), and a wind machine (Le voyage dans la lune).^[148]

Hughes describes Offenbach's orchestration as "always skilful, often delicate, and occasionally subtle." He instances Pluton's song in Orphée aux enfers,^{[n 24]} introduced by a three-bar phrase for solo clarinet and solo bassoon in octaves immediately repeated on solo flute and solo bassoon an octave higher.^[149] In Keck's view, "Offenbach's orchestral scoring is full of details, elaborate counter-voices, minute interactions coloured by interjections of the woodwinds or brass, all of which establish a dialogue with the voices. His refinement of design equals that of Mozart or Rossini."^[148]

Compositional method

Offenbach often composed amidst noise and distractions. According to Keck, Offenbach would first make a note of melodies a libretto suggested to him in a notebook or straight onto the librettist’s manuscript. Next using full score manuscript paper he wrote down vocal parts in the centre, then a piano accompaniment at the bottom possibly with notes on orchestration. When Offenbach felt sure the work would be performed, he began full orchestration, often employing a codified system.^[150]

Parody and influences

Offenbach was well known for parodying other composers' music. Some of them saw the joke and others did not. Adam, Auber and Meyerbeer enjoyed Offenbach's parodies of their scores.^[53] Meyerbeer made a point of attending all Bouffes-Parisiens productions, always seated in Offenbach's private box.^[65] Among the composers who were not amused by Offenbach's parodies were Berlioz and Wagner.^[151] Offenbach mocked Berlioz's "strivings after the antique",^[152] and his initial light-hearted satire of Wagner's pretensions later hardened into genuine dislike.^[153] Berlioz reacted by bracketing Offenbach and Wagner together as "the product of the mad German mind",^[151] and Wagner, ignoring Berlioz, retaliated by writing some unflattering verses about Offenbach.^[151]

In general, Offenbach's parodistic technique was simply to play the original music in unexpected and incongruous circumstances. He slipped the banned revolutionary anthem La Marseillaise into the chorus of rebellious gods in Orphée aux enfers, and quoted the aria "Che farò" from Gluck's Orfeo in the same work; in La belle Hélène he quoted the patriotic trio from Rossini's Guillaume Tell and parodied himself in the ensemble for the kings of Greece, in which the accompaniment quotes the rondeau from Orphée aux enfers. In his one act pieces, Offenbach parodied Rossini's "Largo al factotum" and familiar arias by Bellini. In Croquefer (1857), one duet consists of quotations from Halévy's La Juive and Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable and Les Huguenots.^[139][154] Even in his later, less satirical period, he included a parodic quotation from Donizetti's La fille du régiment in La fille du tambour-major.^[4]

Other examples of Offenbach's use of incongruity are noted by the critic Paul Taylor: "In La belle Hélène, the kings of Greece denounce Paris as 'un vil séducteur' to a waltz tempo that is itself unsuitably seductive … the potty-sounding phrase 'L'homme à la pomme' becomes the absurd nucleus of a big cod-ensemble."^[155] Another lyric set to absurdly ceremonious music is "Votre habit a craqué dans le dos" ("Your coat has split down the back") in La vie parisienne.^[15] The Grand Duchess of Gérolstein's rondo "Ah! Que j'aime les militaires" is rhythmically and melodically similar to the finale of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, but it is not clear whether the similarity is parodic or coincidental.^[15]

Other works[link]

Dr. Miracle and Antonia in the 1881 premiere of The Tales of Hoffmann

Of Offenbach's two serious operas, Die Rheinnixen, a failure, was not revived until the 21st century.^[156] His second attempt, The Tales of Hoffmann, was originally intended as a grand opera.^[157] When the work was accepted by Léon Carvalho for production at the Opéra-Comique, Offenbach agreed to make it an opéra comique with spoken dialogue. It was incomplete when he died;^[158] Faris speculates that, but for Georges Bizet's premature death, Bizet rather than Guiraud would have been asked to complete the piece and would have done so more satisfactorily.^[159] The critic Tim Ashley writes, "Stylistically, the opera reveals a remarkable amalgam of French and German influences … Weberian chorales preface Hoffmann's narrative. Olympia delivers a big coloratura aria straight out of French grand opera, while Antonia sings herself to death to music reminiscent of Schubert."^[38]

Although he wrote ballet music for many of his operettas, Offenbach wrote only one ballet, Le papillon. The score was much praised for its orchestration, and it contained one number, the "Valse des rayons", that became an international success.^[160] Between 1836 and 1875 he composed several individual waltzes and polkas, and suites of dances.^[161] They include a waltz, Abendblätter ("Evening Papers") composed for Vienna with Johann Strauss's Morgenblätter ("Morning Papers") as a companion piece.^[162] Other orchestral compositions include a piece in 17th-century style with cello solo, which became a standard work of the cello repertoire. Little of Offenbach's non-operatic orchestral music has been regularly performed since his death.^[32]

Offenbach composed more than 50 non-operatic songs between 1838 and 1854, most of them to French texts, by authors including Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier and Jean de La Fontaine, and also ten to German texts. Among the most popular of these songs was "À toi" (1843), dedicated to the young Hérminie d'Alcain as an early token of his love.^[163]

Arrangements[link]

Although the overtures to Orphée aux enfers and La belle Hélene are well known and frequently recorded, the scores usually performed and recorded were not composed by Offenbach, but were arranged by Carl Binder and Eduard Haensch, respectively, for the Vienna premieres of the two works. Offenbach's own preludes are much shorter.^[164]

In 1938, Manuel Rosenthal assembled the popular ballet Gaîté Parisienne from his own orchestral arrangements of melodies from Offenbach's stage works, and in 1953 the same composer assembled a symphonic suite, Offenbachiana, also from music by Offenbach.^[165] Jean-Christophe Keck regards the 1938 work as "no more than a vulgarly orchestrated pastiche";^[166] in Gammond's view, however, it does "full justice" to Offenbach.^[167]

Offenbach and Strauss, 1871 cartoon.

Legacy and reputation[link]

Influence[link]

The musician and author Fritz Spiegl wrote in 1980, "Without Offenbach there would have been no Savoy Opera … no Die Fledermaus or Merry Widow.^[168] The two creators of the Savoy operas, the librettist, Gilbert, and the composer, Sullivan, were both indebted to Offenbach and his partners for their satiric and musical styles, even borrowing plot components.^[169] For example, Faris argues that the mock-oriental Ba-ta-clan influenced The Mikado, including its character names: Offenbach's Ko-ko-ri-ko and Gilbert's Ko-Ko;^[170] Faris also compares Le pont des soupirs (1861) and The Gondoliers (1889): "in both works there are choruses à la barcarolle for gondoliers and contadini [in] thirds and sixths; Offenbach has a Venetian admiral telling of his cowardice in battle; Gilbert and Sullivan have their Duke of Plaza-Toro who led his regiment from behind."^[93] Offenbach's Les Géorgiennes (1864), like Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida (1884), depicts a female stronghold challenged by males in disguise.^{[171][n 25]} The best-known instance in which a Savoy opera draws on Offenbach's work is The Pirates of Penzance (1879), where both Gilbert and Sullivan follow the lead of Les brigands (1869) in their treatment of the police, plodding along ineffectually in heavy march-time.^[108] Les brigands was presented in London in 1871, 1873 and 1875; for the first of these, Gilbert made an English translation of Meilhac and Halévy's libretto.^[108]

However much the young Sullivan was influenced by Offenbach,^{[n 26]} the influence was evidently not in only one direction. Hughes observes that two numbers in Offenbach's Maitre Péronilla (1878) bear "an astonishing resemblance" to "My name is John Wellington Wells" from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer (1877).^[175]

Elegy to Offenbach by Clement Scott in the magazine Punch

It is not clear how directly Offenbach influenced Johann Strauss. He had encouraged Strauss to turn to operetta when they met in Vienna in 1864, but it was not until seven years later that Strauss did so.^[176] However, Offenbach's operettas were well established in Vienna, and Strauss worked on the lines established by his French colleague; in 1870s Vienna, an operetta composer who did not do so was quickly called to order by the press.^[176] In Gammond's view, the Viennese composer most influenced by Offenbach was Franz von Suppé, who studied Offenbach's works carefully and wrote many successful operettas using them as a model.^[177]

In his 1957 article, Lubbock wrote, "Offenbach is undoubtedly the most significant figure in the history of the 'musical'," and traced the development of musical theatre from Offenbach to Irving Berlin and Rodgers and Hammerstein, via Franz Lehár, André Messager, Sullivan and Lionel Monckton.^[130]

Reputation[link]

During Offenbach's lifetime, and in the obituary notices in 1880, fastidious critics (dubbed "Musical Snobs Ltd" by Gammond) showed themselves at odds with public appreciation.^[178] In a 1980 article in The Musical Times, George Hauger commented that those critics not only underrated Offenbach, but wrongly supposed that his music would soon be forgotten.^[179] Although most critics of the time made that erroneous assumption, a few perceived Offenbach's unusual quality; in The Times, Francis Hueffer wrote, "none of his numerous Parisian imitators has ever been able to rival Offenbach at his best."^[180] Nevertheless, the paper joined in the general prediction: "It is very doubtful whether any of his works will survive."^[180] The New York Times shared this view: "That he had the gift of melody in a very extraordinary degree is not to be denied, but he wrote currente calamo,^{[n 27]} and the lack of development of his choicest inspirations will, it is to be feared, keep them from reaching even the next generation".^[181] After the posthumous production of The Tales of Hoffmann, The Times partially reconsidered its judgment, writing, Les Contes de Hoffmann [will] confirm the opinion of those who regard him as a great composer in every sense of the word".^[182] It then lapsed into what Gammond calls "Victorian sanctimoniousness"^[183] by taking it for granted that the opera "will uphold Offenbach's fame long after his lighter compositions have passed out of memory."^[184]

Friedrich Nietzsche called Offenbach both an "artistic genius" and a "clown", but wrote that "nearly every one" of Offenbach's works achieves half a dozen "moments of wanton perfection", while the critic Sacheverell Sitwell compared Offenbach's lyrical and comic gifts to those of Mozart and Rossini.^[185] Émile Zola commented on Offenbach and his work in a novel (Nana)^[186] and an essay, "La féerie et l'opérette IV/V".^[187] While granting that Offenbach's best operettas are full of grace, charm and wit, Zola blames Offenbach for what others have made out of the genre. Zola calls operetta a "public enemy" and a "monstrous beast". While some critics saw the satire in Offenbach's works as a social protest, an attack against the establishment, Zola saw the works as a homage to the social system in the Second Empire.^[187]

Debussy, Bizet, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov loved Offenbach's operettas.^[188] Debussy rated them higher than The Tales of Hoffmann: "The one work in which [Offenbach] tried to be serious met with no success."^{[n 28]} A London critic wrote, on Offenbach's death:

I somewhere read that some of Offenbach's latest work shows him to be capable of more ambitious work. I, for one, am glad he did what he did, and only wish he had done more of the same.^[192]

Notes and references[link]

Notes