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RE🎶🔥 Jacques Offenbach, Galop Infernal, from Orphée aux Enfers Orchestre de Paris, Thomas Hengelbrock 🎻
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At the 1858 premiere, the critic Jules Janin called the opera a “profanation of sacred antiquity.” What he didn’t know was that Offenbach had copied one of Janin’s own speeches and put it into a character’s mouth. The humiliation became scandal, the scandal turned into box office lines, 228 sold-out performances, at a time when 100 was already considered a success. Napoleon III himself, a target of the satire, requested a private performance. Those who tried to destroy the opera made it the most famous in Paris.
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The Galop Infernal is built on three chords and a pulsing bass that leaves no room to breathe. The simplicity is calculated, each repetition of the theme adds instruments and accelerates the tempo, creating a spiral of energy that seems to have no ceiling. A musicologist analyzed the piece and concluded that, beneath the appearance of chaos, there is a deliberate musical dramaturgy. Offenbach knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew the audience didn’t need to understand it to feel it.
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Thomas Hengelbrock leads the Orchestre de Paris with a scale Offenbach never had. The original piece was written for around 30 musicians in a 300-seat theater. Here, a full symphonic orchestra, brass, strings, percussion at full power. Hengelbrock knows both sides of this story, in 2005, he staged Orfeo ed Euridice with Pina Bausch, the very opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck that Offenbach parodied. When he conducts the Galop, he conducts the joke as well.
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