Helen1.0049_Offenbach

Helen1.0049_Offenbach

Oxford Music online
OGCMA s.v. "Helen"
Homer, Il., 3.162ff.
Herodotus 2.112-20
Apollodorus Libr. 3.10.7-22.1

Jacques Offenbach, 1819-1880. La belle Hélène. Opéra bouffe. Libretto, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. First performed 17 Dec 1864, Théâtre des Variétés, Paris.

Oxford Music online (authentication to lib.byu.edu required): https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O900736.

Offenbach's amusing satire takes aim at many cultural targets of contemporary France's Second Empire, from Rossini's musical popularity to the foibles, oddities, and ineptitutdes of Napoleon III. Familiar narratives from Greek myth are reshaped for comic effect.

Image at right is contemporary cartoon by O-E-J Jahyer and H-A Darjou, accessed in public domain thru Wikipedia.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.