The grand opera of the Quebec Opera Festival, which has been held since July 24, will be Parisian life by Jacques Offenbach presented on August 2, 3 and 4, under the direction of Thomas Le Duc-Moreau. Rarely performed in Quebec, Offenbach has enjoyed a real renaissance for a quarter of a century, which owes much to one man: Jean-Christophe Keck, musicologist and conductor considered the world specialist on the composer.
We witnessed in the last quarter of the 20th centurye century to a “Rossini phenomenon” born, from the Rossini centenary of 1968, from the fierce commitment of the conductor Alberto Zedda, generating a work of critical edition of the scores, presented at the Pesaro Festival. We can draw a parallel with the work of Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), much more at the forefront today than fifty years ago. “There is indeed an Offenbach phenomenon, less concentrated than for Rossini, but quite visible”, judges Jean-Christophe Keck, with whom The duty was able to talk.
The fetish
“For the centenary of Offenbach’s death in 1980, there was a small surge, but the big take-off was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the publisher Boosey & Hawkes came to ask me to direct the monumental Offenbach edition,” recalls Jean-Christophe Keck. The take-off is therefore linked, as for Rossini, to the existence of new, in-depth and reliable editions.
“Before, we always used the same material, more than questionable, the same works over and over again. The publishers and the Offenbach family did not take care of this heritage,” notes the musicologist, whose work has found an echo in particular with the conductor Marc Minkowski (Orpheus in the Underworld, The Beautiful Helen, The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein) and the Montpellier Festival. Jean-Christophe Keck is credited with the resurrection of works such as The Rhine Fairies, in 2003, or Fantasio (Berlin 2016 and Paris 2017).
This work was done little by little, he explains. “We did not proceed like other publishers. Since we are not subsidized by anyone and no foundation supports us, one edition must make the others profitable.” And that is where Keck and Boosey & Hawkes were very lucky. The first request from a theater was for Orpheus in the Underworld. “It was Offenbach’s lucky charm: whenever he had money problems, with bailiffs on his tail, he would come back Orpheus in the underworld. It made him money, and he got out of trouble. For us, that’s exactly what happened. Orpheus in the Underworld subsidized the first editions.
Orpheus is Offenbach’s most performed work in German-speaking countries, while Parisian lifewhich we will see this week in Quebec, is popular in French-speaking countries. Thanks to the success ofOrpheusKeck was able to work, for example, on dramatic music, Hateon a score by Victorien Sardou. “We played it once in 2009, and that’s where it ended. It’s months and months of work for nothing, financially.”
Archeology
In the case of Offenbach (“who wrote 130 operas in a complete catalogue of 650 works”), producing an edition is a relentless task. “I will never see the end of it in my lifetime,” the musicologist concedes.
The latter is indeed led to practice real musical archaeology. “We are faced with very complicated things, because the heritage has not been well preserved. When Offenbach died, his daughters shared the heritage and began to sell little by little, piece by piece, the manuscripts here and there. We are faced with a scattering of sources throughout the world, sometimes even sheet by sheet or piece of sheet by piece of sheet! It is a nightmare for a musicologist.”
Fortunately, a large part of the collection is still in the possession of the family, thanks to whom Keck has digitized or photocopied 20,000 pages of manuscripts and documents. Because, moreover, collectors give relatively random access to their treasures. This was the case with Parisian life, whose manuscript was in the possession of conductor Richard Bonynge. “I wanted to consult it to complete my edition, but he didn’t want to show it too much. Finally, he sold it to a Monegasque collector.” And the latter was even more secretive! One day, “learning that he had a serious illness, this collector bequeathed everything to the library of the Juilliard School in New York, and the manuscript finally became accessible.”
Over time, many documents have fortunately been bought by the world’s great libraries. There are some in New York, London and Paris. But just this month, Sotheby’s in London sold a previously unknown waltz. “I bought it, but I didn’t get it, so it’s another score that we don’t know where it’s going to go and that may come out again one day,” suggests Jean-Christophe Keck.
Added to this were disasters, such as the collapse of the Historical Archives Department of the Cologne Library in March 2009. The place housed the largest European Offenbach collection. “Fortunately, everything was saved, but it is impossible to access it. Luckily, I had X-rayed or photocopied everything before the accident,” Jean-Christophe Keck tells us.
Multiplication
We know very little about the extent to which Offenbach’s works fluctuate. “When he creates a work, between the manuscript, the first edition and what it becomes afterwards, there are differences according to the tastes of the public or the countries. There are also the versions of Paris and Vienna, where he reorchestrates the works because in Paris he has limited means and in Vienna a larger orchestra. But Offenbach is above all a great playwright: when he sees that the public is not getting on board, he does not hesitate to cut. So we often have manuscripts that are more complete than the editions of what was given in the theaters.”
The philosophy of the edition that Jean-Christophe Keck directs is to give (to theaters, conductors and directors) the maximum number of sources. “There is what I call the “original version”: what Offenbach composed. We then indicate what he chose for the premiere in Paris, the premiere in Vienna.” From this, performers can make informed choices. Keck often finds first editions in theater collections. “At the Bibliothèque nationale de France, we discovered collections from theaters such as the Théâtre des Variétés, the Théâtre de la Gaîté, but unfortunately not that of the Bouffes Parisiens, whose whereabouts are unknown. We find in these collections the annotated material of the creation.”
Among the things that remain lost is the original manuscript ofOrpheus in the Underworld. “It’s his main work. But we don’t have it. So, either it was destroyed, which is unfortunately possible, or it’s with a collector who doesn’t want to take it out, or it’s simply forgotten in a corner.” One day, Jean-Christophe Keck thought he had hit the mark in the family attic while looking for Offenbach’s cello. “I didn’t find the cello, but between two piles of newspapers, there were two large volumes marked Orpheus in the Underworld. When I opened them, I was disappointed, because it was the handwriting of a copyist. But in this copy of the score, there was the famous ballet The kingdom of Neptune, that we thought was completely lost. There are still coincidences like that, and I remain hopeful.”
It’s with Parisian life In Lyon, in 1991, Jean-Christophe Keck’s life began with Offenbach, his “very first edition, before Boosey”. The Lyon Opera had asked him to reconstruct the five-act version that no longer existed. “I had found archives of the creation”, the musicologist recalls. Not in agreement with what he had seen, dramaturgically, on stage, Jean-Christophe Keck had almost stopped his vocation as an editor dead in its tracks.
Offenbach, too, has come a long way, if we look at our country’s relationship with his music. “Documents show that the arrival of Offenbach’s music in Canada was terrible,” relates the leader. “The Baptists asked their followers not to watch the operettas, saying that it was diabolical, or asked them to pray during the performances!”