Kicking Up Our Heels with Offenbach's Can-Can (from Orpheus in the Underworld)
The Backstory
Galop infernal
Welcome, I'm Jacques Offenbach, and this is the backstory of my Can-Can (from Orpheus in the Underworld). You'll learn how a critic's outrage over my opera, which he called blasphemous, sent crowds flocking to the theatre, and that's a tale worth knowing before the tune begins. Here on the site, my fellow composers and I also teach you to recognize our pieces whenever they play, so why not test yourself in the Trainer ?
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A Boy from Cologne Tries His Luck
I was born in Cologne in 1819, and I grew up to make my name in Paris, which is a long way to go for a man who only wanted to make people laugh. By the time my Orpheus in the Underworld reached the stage I was 39 years old. That sounds late for a big success, but I had spent years learning exactly what a Paris audience enjoys. Everything in the Can-Can's story grows out of that patient apprenticeship.A Theatre Smaller Than Your Local Cinema
My company opened in July 1855 in a little house on the Champs-Élysées that held 300 people at most. The rules for such theatres were strict, and for a while they limited how many performers I was allowed to put on stage. In 1858 those limits were lifted, and I felt like a man who had been cooking in a tiny kitchen and was suddenly handed a banquet hall. That change of rules is the real reason a piece as large as Orpheus could exist at all.Sweet Revenge on the Serious Actors
I had sat through a good deal of solemn, statuesque acting about ancient myths at the Comédie-Française, and I had grown tired of it. So I took the old legend of Orpheus and Eurydice and turned it into a lampoon. The gods of Olympus became bored, quarrelsome and rather silly, which is a much more fun way to spend an evening than standing around in a toga. The Can-Can is the wild finale of that joke, where the whole underworld lets go of its dignity.Twenty Principals and One Big Night
The first performance took place on 21 October 1858 at my Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in Paris. It was my first full-length operetta, and I gave it a cast of twenty principals, which was a bold step for a house that had started so small. The audience was not watching a solemn opera, because I had labelled it an opéra bouffon, a comic opera that doesn't take itself seriously. I remember the nerves very well, because a whole new kind of evening in Paris depended on how it went.A Critic Does My Advertising
Then the critic Jules Janin attacked the piece as irreverent and even blasphemous. I could hardly have paid for better publicity, because people who read that kind of outrage tend to buy a ticket just to see what the fuss is about. The controversy drew crowds, and the little theatre filled up night after night. I never wrote to thank him, but I did think about it.Gods Who Looked a Little Familiar
Many people at the time read the behaviour of my gods as a veiled joke about the court of Napoleon III. You might expect an emperor to be offended, but he enjoyed a command performance in 1860. That same year, in early 1860, he personally granted me French citizenship, which meant a great deal to a composer born in Cologne. So the man I may have been teasing turned out to be one of my kindest admirers.Two Hundred and Twenty-Eight Nights
In those days a run of 100 nights was already considered a success. My original production ran for 228 performances, more than double that. Every night the evening ended with the Can-Can, and the audience went home with that galloping tune stuck in their heads. I think that is the best sign a composer can hope for, since a melody that follows people into the street has done its job.Two Authors and Three Tunes in A Major
The words were written by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy, though Halévy worked anonymously, and the 1858 libretto carried only Crémieux's name. I wrote the music, and the finale of the second act is in A major, a bright and open key that suits a wild celebration. Two other numbers in that act, the Boeotian King's song and "J'ai vu le Dieu Bacchus", share the same key. So the second act glows in one colour, and the Can-Can is where that glow finally boils over.The Overture Is Not My Work
I have to confess something about the famous overture to Orpheus in the Underworld, because it isn't mine. Carl Binder arranged it for the 1860 production in Vienna, and it has been attached to my name ever since. I did return to the opera myself in 1874, when it became a four-act version with about sixty players and a military band of forty, and the Can-Can moved to Act 4. That version ran for 290 performances at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, so the old gods clearly had plenty of life left in them.A Very Slow Tortoise Borrows My Tune
Camille Saint-Saëns liked my galop so much that he quoted it in "Tortoises" from his Carnival of the Animals. He gave it to the strings at a slow, drooping pace, and it is a lovely sight, or sound, to hear my frantic tune plodding along like an exhausted animal. He wrote the work privately, and it was first played in private on 3 March 1886, but the public did not hear it until 25 February 1922. Whenever I hear that tortoise version I take it as a compliment, because a tune has to be famous before anyone dares to slow it down.---
Well, that's the story behind my Can-Can, from a small Paris theatre to dance halls that still use the tune today. Did you enjoy learning about the backstory of Can-Can (from Orpheus in the Underworld)? I hope it gave you a new way to listen to a tune you thought you knew so well. When I look back, what pleases me most is that a piece I wrote as a cheeky finale for a comic opera has outlived the evening it was written for. It began as a galop, a fast and slightly mischievous dance, and over time the world decided it belonged to the can-can. I never planned that, but I can't say I mind. There is still more to discover about this music. You could listen for how Saint-Saëns borrowed my tune and slowed it down to a drooping crawl, or look at how the 1858 and 1874 versions of the opera differ. If you'd like to keep exploring, please click on the links provided, and let the tune carry you a little further.