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Ba-ta-clan
''Ba-ta-clan'' is a "chinoiserie musicale" (or operetta) in one act with music by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Ludovic Halévy. It was first performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Paris, on 29 December 1855.Lamb A. Ba-ta-clan. In: ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera''. Macmillan, London and New York, 1997. The operetta uses set numbers and spoken dialogue and runs for under an hour. Background ''Ba-ta-clan'' was Offenbach's first big success, and opened his new winter theatre, the Salle Choiseul. The witty piece satirised everything from contemporary politics to grand opera conventions. It was frequently revived in Paris, London and New York for decades, and Offenbach eventually expanded it as a full-length piece with a cast of eleven. Offenbach's early operettas were small-scale one-act works, since the law in France limited the licence for musical theatre works (other than most operas) to one-act pieces with no more than three singers and, p ...
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Théâtre Des Bouffes-Parisiens
The Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens () is a Parisian theatre founded in 1855 by the composer Jacques Offenbach for the performance of opéra bouffe and operetta. The current theatre is located in the 2nd arrondissement at 4 rue Monsigny with an entrance at the back at 65 Passage Choiseul. In the 19th century the theatre was often referred to as the Salle Choiseul. With the decline in popularity of operetta after 1870, the theatre expanded its repertory to include comedies.Bouffes-Parisien website
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Lamb, Andrew. "Offenbach, Jacques" in Sadie 1992, vol. 3, pp. 653–658.Levin 2009, pp. 401–402.


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Salle Lacaze


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Bataclan (theatre)
The Bataclan () is a theatre located at 50 Boulevard Voltaire in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, France. Designed in 1864 by the architect Charles Duval, its name refers to '' Ba-ta-clan'', an operetta by Jacques Offenbach. Since the early 1970s, it has been a venue for rock music. On 13 November 2015, 90 people were killed in a coordinated terrorist attack in the theatre. History Origin and use The Bataclan originated as a large '' café-concert'' in the Chinoiserie style, with the café and theatre on the ground floor and a large dance hall at first-floor level. Its original name was Grand Café Chinois. The French name "Bataclan" refers to the Offenbach operetta, but it is also a pun on the expression ''tout le bataclan'' (the "kit and caboodle", or "all that jazz", or "the whole nine yards"), the oldest written use of which predates Offenbach by almost a century, in a journal entry of 11 November 1761 by Charles Simon Favart. Concerts were held there but it was best ...
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Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach (, also , , ; 20 June 18195 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 to the 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 Hoffmann'' 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 the ...
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The Contrabandista
''The Contrabandista'', ''or The Law of the Ladrones'', is a two-act comic opera by Arthur Sullivan and F. C. Burnand. It premiered at St. George's Hall, in London, on 18 December 1867 under the management of Thomas German Reed, for a run of 72 performances. There were brief revivals in Manchester in 1874 and America in 1880. In 1894, it was revised into a new opera, ''The Chieftain'', with a completely different second act. The piece was the first of Sullivan's full-length operas that was produced. It was not a great success, with Burnand's libretto receiving criticism, but its music exhibits many of the qualities and techniques that Sullivan would employ in composing his twenty further comic operas, including the famous series of fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas produced between 1871 and 1896. Background In 1866, F. C. Burnand and Arthur Sullivan, then 24 years old, wrote the one-act comic opera ''Cox and Box'' for a private performance at Moray Lodge, where a group of ...
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Orpheus In The Underworld
''Orpheus in the Underworld'' and ''Orpheus in Hell'' are English names for (), a comic opera with music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy. It was first performed as a two-act " opéra bouffon" at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, on 21 October 1858, and was extensively revised and expanded in a four-act " opéra féerie" version, presented at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, Paris, on 7 February 1874. The opera is a lampoon of the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. In this version Orpheus is not the son of Apollo but a rustic violin teacher. He is glad to be rid of his wife, Eurydice, when she is abducted by the god of the underworld, Pluto. Orpheus has to be bullied by Public Opinion into trying to rescue Eurydice. The reprehensible conduct of the gods of Olympus in the opera was widely seen as a veiled satire of the court and government of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. Some critics expressed outrage at the librettists' ...
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Operetta
Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its shorter length, the operetta is usually of a light and amusing character. It sometimes also includes satirical commentaries. "Operetta" is the Italian diminutive of "opera" and was used originally to describe a shorter, perhaps less ambitious work than an opera. Operetta provides an alternative to operatic performances in an accessible form targeting a different audience. Operetta became a recognizable form in the mid-19th century in France, and its popularity led to the development of many national styles of operetta. Distinctive styles emerged across countries including Austria-Hungary, Germany, England, Spain, the Philippines, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. Through the transfer of operetta among different countries, cultural cosmop ...
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Ludovic Halévy
Ludovic Halévy (1 January 1834 – 7 May 1908) was a French author and playwright, best known for his collaborations with Henri Meilhac on Georges Bizet's ''Carmen'' and on the works of Jacques Offenbach. Biography Ludovic Halévy was born in Paris. His father, Léon Halévy (1802–1883), was a civil servant and a clever and versatile writer, who tried almost every branch of literature—prose and verse, vaudeville, drama, history—without, however, achieving decisive success in any. His uncle, Fromental Halévy, was a noted composer of opera; hence the double and early connection of Ludovic Halévy with the Parisian stage. His father had converted from Judaism to Christianity prior to his marriage with Alexandrine Lebas, daughter of a Christian architect. At the age of six, Halévy might have been seen playing in that ''Foyer de la danse'' with which he was to make his readers so familiar, and, when a boy of twelve, he would often, on a Sunday night, on his way back to the ...
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Operetta
Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its shorter length, the operetta is usually of a light and amusing character. It sometimes also includes satirical commentaries. "Operetta" is the Italian diminutive of "opera" and was used originally to describe a shorter, perhaps less ambitious work than an opera. Operetta provides an alternative to operatic performances in an accessible form targeting a different audience. Operetta became a recognizable form in the mid-19th century in France, and its popularity led to the development of many national styles of operetta. Distinctive styles emerged across countries including Austria-Hungary, Germany, England, Spain, the Philippines, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. Through the transfer of operetta among different countries, cultural cosmop ...
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Jean-François Berthelier
Jean-François-Philibert Berthelier (14 December 1830 – 29 September 1888) was a French actor and singer, who performed many light tenor roles in opéra-comique and opéra-bouffe.O’Connor P. 'Jean-François Berthelier' In : ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera''. Macmillan, London and New York, 1997. Early career Berthelier was born in Panissières, the son of a notary. At eleven he became an orphan and moved in with a foster family. He initially worked as an office clerk in a bookstore in Lyon, where on the side he appeared on stage as an extra at the Théâtre des Célestins. His fine voice was noticed, and he made his operatic debut as Fernando in ''La favorite'' at a small provincial theatre in Poitiers in 1849.Yon & Fraison 1996, p. 59. When that theatre closed, he moved to Paris, but after he was refused entry to the Conservatoire de Musique, he turned to singing in cafés-concerts, not without success. He also composed some songs under the pseudonym Berthel. He was ...
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Brive-la-Gaillarde
Brive-la-Gaillarde (; Limousin dialect of oc, Briva la Galharda) is a commune of France. It is a sub-prefecture and the largest city of the Corrèze department. It has around 46,000 inhabitants, while the population of the agglomeration was 75,579 in 2019. Although it is by far the biggest commune in Corrèze, the capital is Tulle. In French popular culture, the town is associated with a song by Georges Brassens. History Even though the inhabitants settled around the 1st century, the city only started to grow much later. From around the 5th century onwards, the original city began to develop around a church dedicated to Saint-Martin-l'Espagnol. During the 12th century walls were built around the city and during the Hundred Years' War a second wall was built. These fortifications no longer exist and have been replaced by boulevards. The commune was named "Brive" until 1919, when it was renamed "Brive-la-Gaillarde". The word "Gaillarde" (still used in current French) probab ...
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Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (; 3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was a Sicilian opera composer, who was known for his long-flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania". Many years later, in 1898, Giuseppe Verdi "praised the broad curves of Bellini's melody: 'there are extremely long melodies as no-one else had ever made before'." A large amount of what is known about Bellini's life and his activities comes from surviving letters—except for a short period—which were written over his lifetime to his friend Francesco Florimo, whom he had met as a fellow student in Naples and with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. Other sources of information come from correspondence saved by other friends and business acquaintances. Bellini was the quintessential composer of the Italian '' bel canto'' era of the early 19th century, and his work has been summed up by the London critic Tim Ashley as: ... also hugely influential, as much a ...
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Paul De Kock
Charles Paul de Kock (May 21, 1793 in Passy, Paris – April 27, 1871 in Paris) was a French novelist. Although one of the most popular writers of his day in terms of book sales, he acquired a literary reputation for low-brow output in poor taste. In 2021 Brad Bigelow wrote: "Today, if we set aside over-priced print on demand reprints of his ancient editions, the works of Paul de Kock haven't seen a new English edition (or translation) in at least a century." Biography His father, Jean Conrad de Kock, a banker of Dutch extraction, was guillotined in Paris 24 March 1794, a victim of the Reign of Terror. His mother, Anne-Marie Perret, née Kirsberger, was a widow from Basel. Paul de Kock began life as a banker's clerk. For the most part he resided on the Boulevard St. Martin in Paris, where he was born and lived out his life, rarely leaving the city. He began to write for the stage very early and composed many operatic libretti. His first novel, ''L'Enfant de ma femme'' (181 ...
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