Gondola Gossip on Offenbach's Barcarolle
The Backstory

Ghosts in the woods before gondolas on the water

When people hear my Barcarolle, formally titled Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour, they usually picture a moonlit canal and a traditional song sung by Venetian boatmen. The funny truth is that this melody started its life in 1863 far from any water, tucked away in a German forest. I had received a commission from the Vienna Court Opera to write a romantic German-language work called Die Rheinnixen. For its third act, I wrote this gentle tune as a song called Komm' zu uns for a chorus of woodland elves, who apparently knew a thing or two about a relaxing evening.

A chilly night in Vienna

That earlier opera had its premiere at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna in February 1864. Although I was quite fond of the score, the whole production did not stay on the stage for long, and my little elf melody went back into my desk drawer for a long nap. A good tune is a bit like a favorite coat that you refuse to throw away just because the weather changed. I always had a feeling that those swaying notes deserved a second chance in a warmer climate.

Racing the clock in Paris

Seventeen years later, in 1880, I was at home in Paris pouring all my remaining energy into my final opera, Les contes d'Hoffmann. It was a tough race against time because I was suffering from terrible gout that made simply sitting at my writing desk an ordeal. I wanted this work to be my masterpiece, something deeper than the light, cheerful pieces that had made my name. Sadly, my heart gave out in October 1880 before I could finish orchestrating the whole score, which is a terribly rude way for a deadline to interrupt a composer.

A helping hand from a friend

Because I left the music unfinished, my fellow French composer Ernest Guiraud stepped in to complete the orchestration and get the score ready for the stage. With French words by Jules Barbier, that old melody from Die Rheinnixen was brought back to open the Venetian act, which we call the Giulietta act. To this day, music scholars still debate whether I planned to reuse the tune myself or if Ernest Guiraud pulled it out of my old papers after I was gone. Since the piece does not show up in my surviving handwritten manuscripts for the 1881 opera, I suppose I will let the experts keep guessing a little longer.

Evicted from Venice on opening night

When Les contes d'Hoffmann finally premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in February 1881 under the baton of Jules Danbé, things did not go quite according to the map. During the final dress rehearsals, the theater decided the show was running far too long and cut the entire Venetian act right out of the evening. Nobody wanted to lose the Barcarolle, however, so they simply packed it up and moved it into the Antonia act instead. It takes a sturdy boat song to survive having its canal taken away right before the curtain goes up.

How to rock a boat without getting seasick

If you listen closely to how the piece is put together, the secret lies in the unhurried Moderato pace and the 6/8 meter. That simply means you can count six gentle beats in every measure, grouped in two sets of three, creating a natural rise and fall like small waves against a wooden hull. I shaped the piece in a simple three-part form where the main melody returns after a middle section, framed by a quiet orchestra introduction and a fading postlude at the end. You do not need to know a single word of musical theory to feel the water moving underneath the notes.

Harmony for two on the water

In the opera, the song is a duet for the courtesan Giulietta, a soprano, and Hoffmann's faithful companion Nicklausse, who is sung by a mezzo-soprano. Rather than taking turns showing off, the two singers spend most of the song moving together in smooth parallel harmonies, a few notes apart. A backing chorus and the orchestra wrap around them, keeping that steady pulse going from the first measure to the last. When the Parisian publisher Choudens printed the score in 1881 as number thirteen, they included our standard D major version alongside another in F major so people could easily sing it at home.

No catalogue numbers needed

Unlike many serious composers who neatly numbered every sneeze and sonata they ever wrote, I never bothered to give an opus number to the Barcarolle or to Les contes d'Hoffmann. Because the opera was left in pieces when I died and trimmed before opening night, sorting out the music later became a giant puzzle for researchers. In more recent times, scholars like Michael Kaye and Jean-Christophe Keck have published critical editions to piece together everything we wrote. Even without a tidy label on the cover, the New Grove Dictionary of Opera eventually called my little tune the most famous barcarolle ever written.

Rumors from an icy ocean

Once a melody goes out into the world, it sometimes winds up in places its composer could never have imagined. The story goes that the ship's orchestra played my Barcarolle as the RMS Titanic was sinking in April 1912, according to accounts from people who survived that night. Nobody knows for certain what the musicians actually played in those final hours, as the exact list of tunes remains unverified. Still, it is moving to think that a gentle piece meant to mimic calm waters might have offered a moment of comfort in the middle of the Atlantic.

From nineteenth-century Paris to the silver screen

In the decades since, my boat song has traded the opera house for the movie theater more than once. Back in 1960, Elvis Presley borrowed the melody for his song Tonight Is So Right for Love in the film G.I. Blues, which is quite a leap from my German forest elves. Later on, in 1997, Roberto Benigni used the piece as a central musical thread running through his wonderful film Life Is Beautiful. Not bad for an old tune that was once left in a drawer and nearly cut before its own premiere.