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The good Offenbach has had another failure at the Opera-Comique with Fantasio. Shall one ever get to hating piffle? That would be a fine step on the right path. Tourgueneff has been in Paris since the first of December. Every week we have an engagement to read Saint-Antoine and to dine together. But something always prevents and we never meet.
They distrust all gaiety and declare it unesthetic. As the good public cannot resign itself to getting along without gaiety, it goes to operetta and turns naturally to Offenbach who created it and furnished an inexhaustible supply. My phrase is not exaggerated, for Offenbach hardly dreamed of creating an art.
The champagny strains of Offenbach are heard in every town of Spain oftener than the ballads of the country. In Madrid there are more pilluelos who whistle Bu qui s'avance than the Hymn of Riego. The Cancan has taken its place on the boards of every stage in the city, apparently to stay; and the exquisite jota and cachucha are giving way to the bestialities of the casino cadet.
The architect remained alone in his office for some time; at the end of a quarter of an hour, when the scream of a railway whistle had echoed down the still street, he beheld Somerset repassing the window in a direction from the railway, with somewhat of a sad gait. In another minute Dare entered, humming the latest air of Offenbach. ''Tis a mere piece of duplicity! said Havill. 'What is?
The red-haired judge, with straw hat and Mephistophelean limp, was there, looking like an Offenbach villain out for a spree.
But which of the three illustrious composers, Herve, Offenbach and Lecocq, should he choose to write the music? The book of words would have to be written before the music was composed, and so far as he knew the only French composer who could set English words was Herve. It seemed to Kate that he never would cease to draw forth a cigarette case, or to cross and uncross his legs.
"I'm afraid it has been awfully dull for you " "Lady Adela!" he said. "But the next time you come we shall try to be less monotonously bucolic. Perhaps by then the phonograph will be able to bring us a whole musical evening from London, whenever we want it a whole performance of an operetta " "Offenbach in a Highland valley!" he exclaimed.
He will sing no longer the lively little scraps of Offenbach I have taught him. He does nothing but sit still and mumble now in his own forgotten language. And he's dreadfully cross so crabbed mon Dieu, what a character!
As the son of a dramatist and the nephew of a popular composer, he had easy access to the stage. He began as the librettist-in-ordinary to M. Offenbach, for whom he wrote Ba-ta-clan in 1855, and later the Chanson de Fortunio, the Pont des Soupirs and Orphée aux Enfers.
The refrains of Offenbach or Herve, interspersed with unexpected notes, in which one resorts to expressive gestures for aid, to a motion of the head or the body, would have suited her better; but she dared not admit it to her sentimental instructress. By the way, although she had been made to sing a great deal at Mademoiselle Le Mire's, her voice was still fresh and not unpleasing.
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