Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time Review

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(More customer reviews)An excellent presentation of 19th century Paris and the music of Offenbach. This is my only book on the topic so no comparisons are possible

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Siegfried Kracauer's biography of the composer Jacques Offenbach is aremarkable work of social and cultural history. First published in German in 1937and in English translation in 1938, the book uses the life and work of Offenbach asa focal point for a broad and penetrating portrayal of Second Empire Paris.Offenbach's immensely popular operettas have long been seen as part of the largerhistorical amnesia and escapism that pervaded Paris in the aftermath of 1848. ButKracauer insists that Offenbach's productions must be understood as more thanglittering distractions. The fantasy realms of such operettas as La Belle Hélènewere as one with the unreality of Napoleon III's imperial masquerade, but they alsomade a mockery of the pomp and pretense surrounding the apparatuses of power. At thesame time, Offenbach's dreamworlds were embedded with a layer of utopian contentthat can be seen as an indictment of the fraudulence and corruption of the times.This edition includes Kracauer's preface to the original German edition, translatedinto English for the first time, and a critical foreword by Gertrud Koch.