Orphée aux enfers

It’s the robust irreverence of Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) that sustains it through a cheerfully eclectic mix of musical styles, from 18th-century opera parodies to riotous sonic slapstick—not forgetting the breathless "Galop infernal" that was taken up by Parisian nightclubs and became forever famous as the soundtrack to the can-can. Written in 1858 as an intimate comic operetta, then enlarged in 1874 to something double the size (with two dozen solo roles!), it was Offenbach’s first full-evening entertainment and intended to lampoon the lofty classicism favoured by French theatres of the time. Reimagining the legend of Orpheus, which has totemic status in opera thanks to Monteverdi and Gluck, it shows the hero as only too pleased to offload his wife to Hades, though forced by Public Opinion to make some attempt at rescuing her. The fun includes a notorious spoof on Gluck’s celebrated aria "Che farò senza Euridice", and supposedly satirical attacks against the court of the French emperor, Napoleon III—although the emperor seems not to have noticed, attending a command performance of the piece with evident pleasure.