Jacques Offenbach and Jules Verne: abortive encounters

Offenbach and Verne were among the most popular creators of the nineteenth century. Today, their works continue to fascinate a wide audience, while the academic world still looks on them with a greater or lesser degree of condescension, as in their own day. Although Verne was published in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in the early 2000s, Offenbach is only just beginning to receive rigorous musicological treatment. The two creators, born nine years apart, both had difficult beginnings followed by prodigious success. Their creative power and originality provide further links between them. The two men crossed paths three times in three theatres that were particularly important for Offenbach’s career: the Bouffes-Parisiens, the Gaîté and the Variétés. We shall return to those three occasions here, without respecting chronology, in order to focus on Le Voyage dans la Lune, which, even more than Monsieur de Chimpanzé and Le Docteur Ox, is emblematic of a relationship that can in many respects be regarded as a succession of abortive encounters.