orig. Jacob Offenbach
born June 20, 1819, Cologne
died Oct. 5, 1880, Paris, France
German-born French composer.
Son of a cantor, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire but had to leave for lack of funds. He first wrote theatre music as conductor of the Théâtre-Français (from 1850); in 1855 he opened his own theatre, Bouffes-Parisiens, for which he wrote many celebrated one-act works. He began writing longer operettas and had a string of hits, including Orpheus in the Underworld (1858), La Belle Hélène (1864), La Vie Parisienne (1866), and The Grand Duchess of Gérolstein (1867). Offenbach is credited with writing in a fluent, elegant style and with a highly developed sense of both characterization and satire. He spent his last three years on his only grand opera, The Tales of Hoffmann , which remained unfinished at his death and was first produced in 1881.