Invocation à Vénus from La belle Hélène (1864)

Ah, que j’aime les militaires from La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867)

Dîtes-lui from La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein

Offenbach and Second Empire Paris were made for each other. There were the commercial opportunities offered by great international exhibitions such as that of 1855, which encouraged him to open his Bouffes-Parisiens, and that of 1867, when both La vie parisienne and La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein enjoyed enormous popularity with the visitors to the city. Best of all, the excesses and the corruption of society and the politics of the day supplied him and his librettists with inexhaustible material for satire - disguised under classical mythology though it might be in pieces like Orphée aux enfers and La belle Hélène. The phenomenal success of La belle Hélène at the Théâtre des Variétés in 1864 was attributable in part, of course, to the work of Offenbach’s most inspired librettists, Meilhac and Halévy, and the bewitching performance of Hortense Schneider, for whom he wrote the usual comic numbers like Un mari sage est en voyage but also an aria of near-operatic status Amours divins. The elegant Invocation à Vénus, which Hélène sings under a wall-painting of her mother and father, Leda and the Swan, neatly combines elements of the two extremes.

La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein was another triumph too for Hortense Schneider, this time as a thinly disguised caricature of Catherine the Great, who makes no secret about fancying her soldiers. Ah, que j’aime les militaires is the brilliant rondeau to which the Grande Duchesse makes her first entry and, with unashamed enthusiasm, declares her definitive liking for brave and smartly turned-out soldiery. She is particularly attracted by the dim recruit Fritz, whom she promotes during the course of the first act from private to commander-in chief. The Grand Duchess’s Dîtes-lui comes from the second act where, impressed by Fritz’s military exploits, she attempts to get him to understand she is in love with him - charmingly and fairly explicitly but to no avail. But since he firmly intends to marry his sweetheart Wanda perhaps he is not so stupid after all