Jacques Offenbach, son of a Jewish cantor, was born in Cologne on 20.6.1819; he died in Paris on 5.10.1880. In 1833 his father took his fourteen-year-old son to the Paris Conservatoire, where the director Luigi Cherubini was impressed by his cello playing and accepted him as a student, even though foreign candidates were not normally admitted there. Offenbach then changed his first name ‘Jacob’ to ‘Jacques’. From 1835 he worked as a cellist at the Paris Opéra comique, making ends meet by teachin...