Customer Reviews

Offenbach (The Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers Series)

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This is one of a series intended to provide a brief though thorough review of a composers life and works. The author successfully meets the criteria for inclusion in that series through a comprehensive, clear, and interesting story-like approach to the personal life and career of Jacques Offenbach. In addition to endowing his work with a personalized style which makes it very much like speaking to a learned friend over afternoon tea, the illustrations, particularly photographs of some of the figures appearing in the story and caricatures of Offenbach himself, add a welcome dash of flavoring to the story.
This is not intended to be a study in depth nor a critical review but a work premised on agreement that Offenbach is worth knowing about. It will, certainly, stimulate one to the desire to see more of his operettas as a light hearted approach to life offered by a serious master of effervescent music with librettists who provided him with appropriate vehicles for the creation of gaiety in the audience.