New-Yorker Stadt-Theater Opera: Orphée aux enfers

“Jakob or ‘Jacques’ Offenbach is a German; but his music is French, and French to such a degree that nothing of Gallo-Nativistic origin has equalled [sic] it. Yet, at the Stadt theatre [sic] last night the public was favored with a German translation of this, perhaps, the best of all Offenbach’s musical eccentricities. The text was translated by Kalisch, undoubtedly one of the foremost of German humorists of the day, and he has thrown into it much of his own wit and many humorous and apt allusions to the political and social conditions of the people of Germany. This makes the French lively Orpheus a somewhat tame Teuton, and in the person of Mr. Varena all of the life that was in him when the score left Offenbach’s studio was the more quashed out. The allusions which occur so often to embarrassing situations in Germany were but half understood, and generally fell flat, because of their remoteness from the daily events pressing round the people in our own country. Nevertheless, this German representation of Offenbach’s Plutonic operette merits praise; for Mr. Guthery, as Jupiter, plays the old roué, conscious of his own power and yet fearful of the intrigues of Juno and others, to perfection, and Mademoiselle Chorherr, as Eurydice, is in song and dialogue almost perfection. Her voice was somewhat burdened last night, which may be owing to the miserable system of ventilation in the building. Yet in the duet with Jupiter, when the latter appears in the disguise of a fly, her and his [sic] acting and singing were justly rewarded with warm applause by the well-filled house, and in the last scene the Eurydice of Miss Chorherr in her solos was justly encored. The operette is to be repeated next week, when Miss Chorherr proposes to sing some couplets of local application.”