Offenbach - Symphonic pieces from „Orphée aux enfers“ von 1874

[BerlinExpat]

I've uploaded three recently discovered ballet pieces from Jacques Offenbach's Opéra féerie ,,Orphée aux enfers" from 1874.

You'll find:
Ballet  -  Le Royaume de Neptune (31:50)
Ballet  -  Pastorale (10:04)
Divertissement des songes et des heur (8:54)

All part of a Deutschlandfunk Kultur broadcast on 15th June 2019 in a coproduction with cpo.

[Mark Thomas]

Terrific! Thank you Colin.

[Richard Moss]

I've just downloaded these 3 works and I am looking forward to listening to them over the week-end - thank you for the upload.  I would appreciate it if you could clarify your upload notes as to whether all these 3 works are hitherto unknown parts of 'Orpheus' or are they other 'ballet' works.  If the former, do we know whereabouts in the extended 1874 version they fitted in?  Any further infomration appreciated
Richard

[Aragion]

All three pieces are parts of 1874 version of "Orphée aux Enfers". "Ballet pastoral" from Act I and "Divertissement des songes et des heures" from the beginning of Act II can be heard (in slightly abridged form, I suppose) in Michel Plasson's recording (https://www.allmusic.com/album/offenbach-orph%C3%A9e-aux-enfers-mw0001840123) of this version. Ballet "Le Royaume de Neptune" was added by Offenbach at the end of Act III on 14 August 1874. This piece remained unpublished until recently.
The Deutschlandfunk Kultur broadcast also contained the 1874 overture and Carl Binder's overture.

[BerlinExpat]

I've listed to the accompanying interviews again and in brief can report the following:
All three ballets were included in the first performance of Orphée aux enfers in 1874. The ballet Le Royaume de Neptune was set in Atlantis and formed a complete act in itself and included a children's ballet for the smaller sea creatures. The speaker suggests that with the form of Orphée as an opéra féerie the intention was to create a "special effect show" and as part of this even the stage was flooded for the first time in the nineteenth century. This ballet replaced the "Ballet of the Fly" in the opéra bouffe version. Not all the music was originally composed for the ballet. Offenbach reused some unpublished material and some of the music was reused in later compositions.
The ballet pastorale was in act 1 and the divertissement was placed in act 2.

The source has been Offenbach's granddaughter's part of his estate which has been made accessible to Christophe Keck which includes thousands of pages of unpublished manuscript pages. The speaker suggested that Offenbach's oeuvre will have to be re-examined in the light of this discovery.

The programme also included two overtures to Orphée aux enfers: Offenbach's own for the 1874 production and one by Carl Binder which Offenbach authorised for the 1859 Vienna production of the opéra bouffe version. This is in effect a potpourri of tunes from the opera.

[Mark Thomas]

How fascinating. Thanks very much for all the background information.

[semloh]

Fantastic stuff, Colin. Thank you.
I'll be listening to these over the weekend.

[Richard Moss]

And may I too add my thanks to UC members for their enlightening comments.  How all you guys know this stuff never fails to amaze me and is one of the pleasures of simply browsing the posts here

Thanks

Richard

[M. Yaskovsky]

CD production available from cpo, August, 19: https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/jacques-offenbach-orchesterstuecke-aus-orphee-aux-enfers/hnum/9254310

[TerraEpon]

Wonderful! Though I guess it means the CD will only be 50 minutes long....

BTW the recent Offenbach disc of overtures by the same performers is fantastic, and includes some real rarities (including the Princesse de Trebizonde overture which I've been wanting to hear for over 20 years since I found the score and as I was doing at the time, making sequences of them on my computer)

[TerraEpon]

So I finally got the disc. If you haven't seen it, it includes both the original overture as well as the popular Binder one so it's actually a good 70 minute disc.

Anyway, this disc as expected is gold....every disc of Offenbach instrumental music I've come across just fills me with joy.

[semloh]

...every disc of Offenbach instrumental music I've come across just fills me with joy.

The power of music is wonderful indeed.