Jacques Offenbach Children: Meet Auguste Offenbach

French composer, cellist, and Romantic era impresario Jacques Offenbach was born in Germany.

He is most known for his nearly 100 operettas written between the 1850s and the 1870s as well as his unfinished opera The Tales of Hoffmann.

Fastidious critics—dubbed “Musical Snobs Ltd” by Gammond—proved themselves opposed to widespread acclaim both during Offenbach’s lifetime and in the obituary notes in 1880.

George Hauger made a comment on how those critics not only undervalued Offenbach but also believed his work will soon be forgotten in an article published in The Musical Times in 1980.

Jacques Offenbach Children: Meet Auguste Offenbach

The union between Offenbach and Marie Manuela Hérminie d’Alcain produced four daughters and a son Charles Ignace Auguste, who followed in his father’s compositional footsteps. Sadly, Auguste died of tuberculosis at the age of 21.

The Offenbach household quickly becomes an important musical and intellectual center in Paris, and their

“Friday Evenings” attract the composers Georges Bizet and Léo Delibes, the painters Edouard Detaille and Gustave Doré, the librettists Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy and the journalist Hippolyte de Villemessant.