Editing Jacques Offenbach (section)

===Cello virtuoso===
Having left the conservatoire, Offenbach was free from the stern academicism of Cherubini's curriculum, but as the biographer [[James Harding (music writer)|James Harding]] writes, "he was free, also, to starve".<ref>Harding, p. 21</ref> He secured a few temporary jobs in theatre orchestras before gaining a permanent appointment in 1835 as a cellist at the {{langr|fr|[[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.<ref name=f21/> Nevertheless, the earnings from his orchestral work enabled him to take lessons with the celebrated cellist [[Louis-Pierre Norblin]].<ref>Gammond, p. 19</ref> 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.<ref>Gammond, pp. 19–20</ref> Some of Offenbach's early compositions were played by the fashionable conductor [[Louis-Antoine Jullien]].<ref>Harding, p. 27</ref> Offenbach and another young composer, [[Friedrich von Flotow]], collaborated in 1839 on a series of works for cello and piano.<ref name=grove/><ref>Faris, pp. 23 and 257</ref> Although Offenbach's ambition was to compose for the stage, he could not gain an entrée to Parisian theatre at this point in his career; with Flotow's help, he built a reputation composing for and playing in the fashionable salons of Paris.<ref>Faris, p. 23 and Gammond, pp. 22–23</ref> Through contacts he made there he gained pupils.<ref name=grove/> In 1838 the {{lang|fr|[[Théâtre du Palais-Royal]]|italic=no}} commissioned him to compose songs for the play {{lang|fr|Pascal et Chambord}}, staged in March 1839.<ref>Yon, p. 44</ref> In January 1839, together with his elder brother, he gave his first public concert.<ref>Yon, p. 45</ref>

[[File:Young Offenbach.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Offenbach as a young cello virtuoso: drawing by Alexandre Laemlein from 1850|alt=sketch of young white man with side whiskers (no moustache) playing the cello]]
Among the salons at which Offenbach most frequently appeared, from 1839, was that of Madeleine-Sophie, {{lang|fr|comtesse de Vaux|italic=no}}.<ref>Yon, p. 43; and Schwarz, p. 45</ref> There he met Hérminie d'Alcain, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a [[Carlist]] general.<ref name=f28>Faris, p. 28</ref><ref>Yon, p. 62</ref> They fell in love, and in 1843 they became engaged, but he was not yet in a financial position to marry.<ref name=g28>Gammond, p. 28</ref> To extend his fame and earning power beyond Paris, he undertook tours of France and Germany.<ref>Yon, p. 59</ref> Among those with whom he performed were [[Anton Rubinstein]] and in September 1843 in a concert in Offenbach's native Cologne, Liszt.<ref name=grove/><ref>Yon, p. 59</ref> In 1844, probably through English family connections of Hérminie,<ref>Harding, p. 39</ref> 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 [[Felix Mendelssohn]], [[Joseph Joachim]], [[Michael Costa (conductor)|Michael Costa]] and [[Julius Benedict]].<ref name=g28/> ''[[The Era (newspaper)|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."<ref>"Madame Puzzi's Concert", ''The Era'', 19 May 1844, p. 5</ref> The British press reported a triumphant [[Royal Command Performance|royal command performance]]; ''[[The Illustrated London News]]'' observed, "Herr Jacques Offenbach, the astonishing Violoncellist, performed on Thursday evening at [[Windsor Castle|Windsor]] before the [[Nicholas I of Russia|Emperor of Russia]], the [[Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach|King of Saxony]], [[Queen Victoria]], and [[Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha|Prince Albert]] with great success."<ref>''The Illustrated London News'', 8 June 1844, p. 370</ref> The use of the German "{{langr|de|Herr}}", reflecting the fact that Offenbach remained a Prussian citizen, was common to all the British press coverage of Offenbach's 1844 tour.<ref>"Varieties", ''[[The Manchester Guardian]]'' 12 June 1844, p. 5; and "Madame Dulcken's Concert", ''[[The Times]]'', 12 June 1844, p. 7</ref> The ambiguity of his nationality sometimes caused him difficulty in later life when France and Prussia became enemies.<ref name=ashley/>

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 {{lang|fr|comtesse de Vaux|italic=no}} acting as his sponsor. Isaac Offenbach's views on his son's conversion from Judaism are unknown.<ref name=h40>Harding, p. 40</ref> The wedding took place on 14 August 1844; the bride was seventeen years old, and the bridegroom was twenty-five.<ref name=h40/> The marriage was lifelong, and happy, despite some extramarital affairs on Offenbach's part.<ref>Harding, p. 52 and Faris, p. 103</ref>{{refn|In addition to a long affair with [[Zulma Bouffar]], Offenbach was known to have had shorter affairs with the singers [[Marie Cico]] and [[Valtesse de la Bigne|Louise Valtesse]].<ref>Yon, pp. 214, 393 and 407</ref>|group= n}} After Offenbach's death, a friend said that Hérminie "gave him courage, shared his ordeals and comforted him always with tenderness and devotion".<ref>[[Victorin de Joncières|De Joncières, Victorin]], ''quoted'' in Gammond, p. 30</ref>

[[File:Jacques Offenbach by Édouard Riou & Nadar.jpg|thumb|upright|right|The composer-conductor caricatured, 1858|alt=sketch of gaunt, beaky, bewhiskered man, wearing Pince-nez eyeglasses, with a cello]]
Returning to the familiar Paris salons, Offenbach gradually shifted the emphasis of his work from being a cellist who also composed to being a composer who also played the cello.<ref>Gammond, p. 30</ref> He had already published many compositions, and some of them had sold well, but now he began to write, perform and produce musical [[Burlesque#Burlesque in music|burlesques]] as part of his salon presentations.<ref name=g32>Gammond, p. 32</ref> He amused the comtesse de Vaux's 200 guests with a parody of [[Félicien David]]'s currently fashionable {{lang|fr|[[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.<ref name=g32/> The following year he staged his first operetta, the one-act {{lang|fr|L'Alcove}}. It had been written at the invitation of the {{lang|fr|Opéra-Comique|italic=no}}, which had then failed to present it, and Offenbach mounted the production himself as part of an evening of his works at the {{lang|fr|École lyrique|italic=no}}.<ref>Yon, p. 75</ref> He seemed on the verge of breaking into theatrical composition when the [[French Revolution of 1848|1848 revolution]] broke out, sweeping [[Louis Philippe I|Louis Philippe]] from the throne and leading to serious bloodshed in the streets of the capital. Three hundred and fifty people were killed within three days.<ref>Horne, pp. 225–226</ref> Offenbach hastily took Hérminie and their two-year-old daughter to join his family in Cologne. The city was experiencing its own [[Revolutions of 1848|nationalistic revolutionary upheaval]] and Offenbach found it expedient to change his forename back to the German while there.<ref>Gammond, p. 33</ref>

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 {{lang|fr|Opéra-Comique|italic=no}}, but was not encouraged in his aspirations to compose.<ref>Gammond, p. 34</ref> His talents had been noted by the director of the [[Comédie-Française]], [[Arsène Houssaye]], who appointed him musical director of the theatre in 1850, with a brief to enlarge and improve the orchestra.<ref>Harding, p. 51</ref> Offenbach composed songs and [[incidental music]] for eleven classical and modern dramas for the {{lang|fr|Comédie-Française|italic=no}} 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,<ref>Harding, p. 54</ref> but the management of the {{lang|fr|Opéra-Comique|italic=no}} was uninterested in commissioning him to compose for its stage.<ref>Gammond, pp. 35–36</ref> The composer and critic [[Claude 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".<ref>Debussy, ''quoted'' in Faris, p. 28</ref>