High Kicks And High Jinks

Offenbach famously created the can-can music, but one of his lesser-known works will be premiered in Garsington Opera’s 30th-anniversary season. Claire Jackson reports

- Claire Jackson

LONG before the Lindy hop, the foxtrot and the Charleston came the can-can, a high-energy, high-kicking dance that was popular in French music halls in the 19th century. The dancers were required to swoosh their long skirts to gain enough freedom for the kicks, showing their hosiery and pantalettes, as famously depicted by Toulouse-Lautrec. The dance was considered scandalous at the time, not least because undergarments tended to be crotchless.

The movement is inextricably linked to Jacques offenbach’s operetta Orpheus in the Underworld (1858), which features the classic ‘can-can’ music. offenbach’s can-can, the Galop Infernal, was actually intended for a different dance (the galop), but its catchy melody and repetitive fast rhythms meant that it perfectly fitted the newly developing dance. The piece sums up the exuberance of the Belle Époque and its place in cultural history has long been established.

However, offenbach, whose 200th anniversary falls this year, is also credited with another first: Orpheus in the Underworld is the first full-length operetta, a type of light opera that pre-dates musical theatre and directly inspired gilbert & Sullivan’s theatrical comedies. offenbach wrote several operettas, as well as operas, many of which drew on the bawdy, erotic themes popularised by the can-can and the Moulin Rouge. The highly charged nature of these stage works attracted widespread criticism —and enormous audiences.

Many of his works are being rescued from the archives this year as part of the bicentenary celebrations. In Cologne, the composer’s home town, a year-long festival is in progress, featuring Orpheus (of course) and Grand Duchess of Gérolstein, an 1867 satire of militarism that was banned in France when the country was defeated in the Franco-Prussian war.