Le pont des soupirs

Le pont des soupirs (The Bridge of Sighs) is an opéra bouffe (or operetta) set in Venice, by Jacques Offenbach, first performed in Paris in 1861. The French libretto was written by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy. Plays, including melodramas, set in Venice were quite common in Paris in the early 19th century; the libretto, by the successful team from Orphée aux enfers, also nods towards the operas La reine de Chypre (1841) and Haydée (1847).Gänzl describes the piece as being in Offenbach's "best bouffe manner", noting a "long list of sparkling and funny musical pieces": the multiple serenade beneath Catarina's balcony, the tale of the loss of the Venetian fleet, the parody of an operatic mad scene for Catarina, and a farcical "quatuor des poignards". Offenbach would return to Venice in the Giulietta act of his final work Les Contes d'Hoffmann.

Le pont des soupirs was first performed in a two-act version at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Paris on 23 March 1861. A four-act version was subsequently given at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris on 8 May 1868. From June 1861 Offenbach had taken his production of the opera to the Theater am Franz-Josefs-Kai in Wien, Treumann-Theater in Berlin, the National Theatre in Pesth and finally the Théâtre des Galeries-Saint-Hubert in Brussels.

Its popularity extended further: it was given to Brussels in 1861, Buenos Aires in 1870, and New York in 1871 (in French). In translation it was produced in Vienna in 1862, Berlin in 1862, Graz in 1865 and Budapest in 1865, followed by other local premieres and runs in the French provinces. The first production in England was at St James's Theatre in 1872 as The Bridge of Sighs, and a year later it was seen at the Carltheater in Vienna.

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