Word: offenbacher
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Offenbach: Gaité Parisienne Suite (London Philharmonic, Efrem Kurtz conducting; Columbia; 4 sides). Sparkling anthology of some of Composer Offen bach's best Second Empire hits. Performance: excellent. Recording: good...
When Jacques Offenbach's operetta La Belle Hélène was first performed in Paris in the days of Empress Eugenie. Prince Metternich took one horrified gander at its neo-Homeric ribaldry, primly led his wife to the nearest exit. But La Belle Hélène outlived Metternich. Last week, in a new version called Helen Goes to Troy, a lavish $140,000 Manhattan production that seemed likely to become Broadway's latest smash-hit musical, it was still going strong...
...TIME, Nov. 9, 1942), Helen Goes to Troy has a revised book and a slightly altered cast of Olympians, including a seminude Venus who really earns her apple. The melodic champagne of its original score has been spiked (by Composer Erich Korngold) with heady draughts from a dozen other Offenbach operettas, including the Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman. Its Helen is sung by chestnut-haired Czech . Soprano Jarmila Novotna, one of the few opera stars who can fill the eye as well...
What makes Helen Goes to Troy as a show is the thing that has kept it alive for nearly a century: the inimitable lilt of Offenbach's music, a vulgar Parisian sheen that sparkles like the rhinestones in a cocotte's garter...
Next day the New Opera's 100-odd youthful singers turned to polishing up their coming offerings: Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne, Verdi's Macbeth, Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame. They raised Steinway Hall's roof with incessant rehearsals. They were out to prove, once & for all, that opera does not have to be sung by middle-aged tenors and bulging contraltos. Between arias, they hotly argued this revolutionary' idea over hamburgers and milk in the 57th Street Automat. To the participants the New Opera is more than opera: it is a crusade. They came...