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The Rhine Fairies
Les Fées du Rhin/ Die Rheinnixen
Les Fées du Rhin/ Die Rheinnixen
This extraordinary Grand Romantic Opera in four acts was unperformed for 138 years following its truncated initial production in Vienna in 1864. Offenbach withdrew the opera from circulation, re-using certain passages more than a decade later in Les Contes d’Hoffmann. The Rhine Fairies was at last restored to its full glory and given its first ever complete performance in Montpellier in 2002. A sensation at various European opera houses, the work was named “Rediscovery of the Year” by Opernwelt magazine in 2005.
With a musical language that evokes the world of Weber and early Wagner, The Rhine Fairies is one of only two grand operas by the celebrated composer of operetta and opéra-comique Jacques Offenbach. It is also the only full-length stage work to a German text by a man who, though German-born, spent the major part of his life and career in Paris, and came to be known as “the Mozart of the Champs-Elysées.” The Rhine Fairies was, until now, an important missing link in the history of 19th-Century opera, a searing masterpiece which paves the way for Offenbach’s much-loved final testament Les Contes d’Hoffmann.
Hear the Barcarolle in its original setting!
With a musical language that evokes the world of Weber and early Wagner, The Rhine Fairies is one of only two grand operas by the celebrated composer of operetta and opéra-comique Jacques Offenbach. It is also the only full-length stage work to a German text by a man who, though German-born, spent the major part of his life and career in Paris, and came to be known as “the Mozart of the Champs-Elysées.” The Rhine Fairies was, until now, an important missing link in the history of 19th-Century opera, a searing masterpiece which paves the way for Offenbach’s much-loved final testament Les Contes d’Hoffmann.
Hear the Barcarolle in its original setting!
Jacques Offenbach
