Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time

Siegfried Kracauer´s biography of the composer Jacques Offenbach is a remarkable work of social and cultural history. First published in German in 1937 and in English translation in 1938, the book uses the life and work of Offenbach as a 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 larger historical amnesia and escapism that pervaded Paris in the aftermath of 1848. But Kracauer insists that Offenbach´s productions must be understood as more than glittering distractions. The fantasy realms of such operettas as La Belle Hélène were as one with the unreality of Napoleon III´s imperial masquerade, but they also made a mockery of the pomp and pretense surrounding the apparatuses of power. At the same time, Offenbach´s dreamworlds were embedded with a layer of utopian content that 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 as well as a critical foreword by Gertrud Koch.