The Memory Man: Jacques Offenbach, Le Bonhomme Jadis and the Origin of an air connu

Abstract

This article is in essence a study of intertextuality in two musico-dramatic genres in Paris of the 1850s: the comédie-vaudeville and straight plays with incidental music. The ‘texts’ that are considered here are interpolated songs in the comédie-vaudeville and purely instrumental interpolations in plays. Their intertextuality depends on the age-old process of contrafactum. Yet a problem arises when the listener cannot recognize the original source of the contrafactum and cannot perceive the intertext.

The article traces such an intertextual problem. It illustrates how the attempt to answer what would appear to be a minor question regarding music in a comédie-vaudeville led to consideration of an aspect of Jacques Offenbach's output that has received very little attention and which in turn poses some problems of its own. I begin by discussing how intertextuality and musical memory were exploited in the nineteenth-century Parisian comédie-vaudeville. I then discuss how my inability to identify a ‘text’, in this case a particular tune used in a production in a Parisian theatre was so bothersome that it caused it to stick in my memory, which in turn allowed me to recognize it in a work by Offenbach. This in turn led to consideration of a short story and a play in which intertextual musical memory plays a large role, and to the music that Offenbach composed for the performance of that play which surprisingly led to the solution of the problem, the identification of the tune. I end with further comments.

This article is in essence an exercise in intertextuality, a concept borrowed from literary criticism, defined in a recent article as: ‘the idea that every text is an intertext: everything we read or hear, we understand in relationship to other texts, and it is the relationship between texts that gives each text its meaning’.¹ This concept has many different aspects and been applied to all sorts of music, from plainchant to Hip-Hop.² Here, the object of study is musical intertextuality in two musico-dramatic genres in the Paris of the 1850s: the comédie-vaudeville and plays with incidental music. The ‘texts’ that are considered here are interpolated songs (the combination of lyrics and music) in the comédie-vaudeville and purely instrumental interpolations in plays. Their intertextuality depends on the common, if not universal, ability of human beings to remember tunes, to associated them with words, to recognize those tunes no matter what words are sung to them, to recognize them even when there are no words, and to associate tunes with the memory of specific events. This ability gives rise to what is perhaps the oldest and most straightforward example of musical intertextuality, the contrafactum, where a melody and a lyric or just a melody which originated in a specific context is wrenched out of that context by being associated with a new lyric, yet somehow retains the original context, thereby becoming an intertext. The fun for the listener is realizing that this has happened, which means that the listener is aware of the original context or contexts of the melody.³ Yet a problem arises when the listener knows only the new context, and not the original one. Without that knowledge the intertext cannot be perceived.

This article traces such an intertextual problem. It illustrates how the attempt to answer what would appear to be a minor question regarding an interpolated song led to consideration of an aspect of Jacques Offenbach's output (the incidental instrumental music that he composed or arranged during his stint as music director of the Comédie-Française, 1850–55) that has received very little attention and which in turn poses some problems of its own. I begin by discussing how intertextuality and musical memory were exploited in the Nineteenth-century Parisian comédie-vaudeville. I will then discuss how my inability to identify a ‘text’ – in this case a particular tune used in a production in a Parisian theatre – was so bothersome that it caused it to stick in my memory, which in turn allowed me to recognize it in a work by Offenbach. This in turn led to consideration of a short story and a play in which intertextual musical memory plays a large role, and to the music that Offenbach provided for the performance of that play which surprisingly led to the solution of the problem, the identification of the tune.

Introduction
Intertextuality and Musical Memory in the Parisian comédie-vaudeville ⁴

Every evening in the nineteenth century, the theatres of Paris were filled with the sound of music. But it was not the theatre music that musicologists tend to be interested in: grand opera, opéra comique (lighter opera with spoken dialogue), Italian opera, performed in theatres devoted to those genres. Instead it was incidental orchestral music accompanying plays, pantomimes and melodramas, and songs (called couplets) interpolated into short comedies and farces called comédies-vaudevilles or vaudevilles (I will use comédie-vaudeville to designate this genre) and into elaborate productions called féeries and revues de fin d'année that formed the basis of the repertories of the popular boulevard theatres where most of the Parisian theatrical audience congregated.⁵

It has been only fairly recently that musicologists have begun seriously to consider the music of nineteenth-century comédies-vaudevilles and have begun to consult the extant musical sources of the theatres where they were performed with the aim of recreating the musical experience of the audiences that regularly attended these productions.⁶ This experience was quite different from the experiences of audiences at the Opéra, Opéra-Comique and other such theatres. There, audiences heard classically trained singers accompanied by large orchestras with lush orchestrations in large-scale works with entirely new music, usually by one composer. In the boulevard theatres, audiences heard singer-actors accompanied by small orchestras with sparse orchestrations, who occasionally in the course of the work sang a song or ensemble with new lyrics (the couplets), set to music that was not new and not by one composer. For the music of the couplets was predominantly made up of airs connus (well-known tunes), almost always identified in the printed texts by their title or timbre. Hence, the couplets were contrafacta (the melody is out of context) and intertextual (the listener/reader is informed of the original context). This intertextuality was in fact the defining feature of the comédie-vaudeville in the nineteenth century; it was even codified into law.⁷ Likewise, lyrics published in collections of popular verse called chansonniers (writers of popular verse were also called chansonniers) were also always headed by the timbre of the air to which they were to be sung (the music is rarely included). To judge from these publications, it could be assumed that ordinary Parisians had a large library of airs in their memories or had access to publications like the Clé du caveau, a compendium of thousands of melodies all identified by timbre in various indexes.⁸ That the music was not new – that it was ‘well-known’ was the point. For while comédies-vaudevilles, churned out by the hundreds, were intended to be forgotten, the music they incorporated, which recycled the same airs connus over and over, depended on being remembered. I have found the air called ‘Le beau Lycas aimait Thémire’ (Caveau 1778) in over 50 comédies-vaudevilles produced between 1817 and 1867. Similar statistics could be created for other favourite airs. It was certainly in the interest of such recycling that the Théâtre des Variétés preserved the musical sources of its comédies-vaudevilles, creating a library of airs already harmonized and orchestrated, which could be inserted into any new comédie-vaudeville in the theatre.⁹ And the creators of comédies-vaudevilles (there was almost always more than one) had to include a person who was able to suggest the air connu that would be appropriate for any couplet, a person that Honoré de Balzac dubbed ‘the Memory Man’.

The Memory Man

In Balzac's satire of the bureaucracy of the July Monarchy, Les Employés (1837), he points out that most of the people who worked in the government office in which much of the novel is set supplemented their income by doing other things.¹⁰ One of them plays clarinet in the orchestra of the Opéra; another is a vaudevilliste. In discussing this character's other job, Balzac gives a succinct description of how a comédie-vaudeville was constructed. It required, he says, three people: un homme à idées, who devised the plot and the scenario (called the charpente or carcasse), un piocheur, who wrote the dialogue and presumably the couplets, and un homme-mémoire, who, according to Balzac, is ‘tasked with setting the couplets to music, arranging [harmonizing?] the choruses and ensembles, singing them, and inserting them into the situation’.¹¹ Apparently the term ‘homme-mémoire’ is unique to Balzac, but Saint-Agnan Choler, in the article ‘Couplets’ in the Encyclopédie moderne (1857), says much the same thing: that there were people who specialized in coming up with the appropriate airs for the couplets: ‘Certain authors, actors, music directors, etc. possess in this regard marvellous knowledge, and there is a certain well-known vaudevelliste whose only contribution as a collaborator in a collective work is to furnish his expertise in this matter’.¹² It would seem that Balzac and Choler are describing someone who had memorized so many airs, perhaps most or even all of the Clé du caveau, that he was in a position to know immediately what air would fit any of the couplets in the comédie-vaudeville. In fact, the whole point of the Clé du caveau was to help memory men find airs for couplets. In that regard, a comment by Pierre Capelle in the fourth edition (1848) is instructive. It comes in a footnote in the Preface where he cites a statement which he says was made to him, apparently decades earlier, by Marc-Antoine Madeleine Désaugiers (1772–1827), a prolific vaudevilliste and chansonnier: ‘Before the existence of your Clé du caveau I came up with the couplets and songs by searching my memory for tunes; now, I can't do anything without consulting your work, which often presents to my imagination a tune more appropriate to the subject I wish to treat’.¹³

Intertextuality and Musical Memory in one Comédie-Vaudeville

A striking example of the way the creators of comédies-vaudevilles exploited the intertextual nature of the genre, and the musical memories of the audience is Où peut-on être mieux, Vaudeville en un acte by Nicolas Théodore Paulin Deslandes and Charles Joseph Édouard Potier, first performed at the Théâtre des Variétés on 3 July 1853. Intertextuality and musical memory were central to the design of this particular comédie-vaudeville. Its authors knew that the audience would silently add to their title Où peut-on être mieux the phrase qu'au sein de sa famille, that the audience would recognize that the title referred to a piece of music that was so famous as to be ubiquitous, so famous and so ubiquitous in fact that it is not in the Clé du caveau: the quartet ‘Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de sa famille’ (What could be better than to be in the bosom of one's family) from Lucile, Comédie en un acte mêlée d'ariettes, libretto by Jean-François Marmontel, music by André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, first performed at the Comédie-Italien on 5 January 1769. This quartet was the hit of the opéra comique and quickly entered public domain as an air which contains the main melodic elements of the opéra-comique ensemble (see Ex. 1).

Ex. 1 Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de sa famille

What could be better than to be in the bosom of one's family? There everyone is content in hearts and minds. Let us live and love as our worthy ancestors did.

This air was classified by Castil-Blaze in his Dictionnaire de Musique Moderne (Paris, 1825) as ‘Proverbe Musical’ which he defines as:

Tunes or fragments of tunes which recall to the imagination the sly cleverness, the ingenious thought, the quotation, the compliment, the declaration of love, the oath, the invocation, the expression of admiration, of desire, of joy, of sadness, etc. which are contained in the words set to the melody.¹⁴

He then lists 30 airs of which the second is ‘Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de sa famille’. After the list he continues with what is in essence a description of intertextuality:

These tunes which have been sung for a long time and are engraved in everybody's memory, give rise to ingenious interpretations and the musician who inserts them at the right time in a serenade, a divertissement, a public festival, is always applauded. The clarinet plays the tune and the words issue from everyone's mouth. The use of these ‘speaking tunes’, of these musical proverbs, is of great help in understanding the pantomime of ballets. They add to the piquancy of certain couplets in the vaudeville. There is nothing that happens in life, no passion, which does not have its expression in music, and, what is more, a sacrosanct expression. One would have to be entirely ignorant of our lyric theatre [i.e., opera and other forms of theatre that include singing] not to understand what most of these tunes signify.¹⁵

Yet what was actually called up in people's memories when listening to ‘Où peut-on être mieux’ is not so clear, because its text was actually open to a myriad of interpretations: It could be taken literally and sentimentally (‘how happy to be in the bosom of one's family’). It could be taken ironically (in the midst of your screaming children and your bickering relatives you think ‘Oh how happy [not!] to be in the bosom of one's family’). It could be taken satirically (about a bunch of crooked politicians: ‘how happy they are to be in the bosom of their family’). Most importantly, the air garnered a political dimension, becoming associated with the Bourbon monarchy (the king is the father of the happy family which is France). This was particularly true during the during the Restoration (1814/15–1830) when it was played whenever a member of the royal family made a public appearance.¹⁶ In the July monarchy (1830–1848), the air was occasionally used in its anthem function now associated with Louis Philippe, but the satiric use seems to increase, and the same happens during the Second Republic (1848–1852) and the Second Empire (1852–1870). In short, there was an enormous amount of intertextual baggage associated with this particular air, baggage that the audience of the Variétés in 1853 certainly was aware of. The question they might have asked themselves before the performance began was which of the interpretations of ‘Où peut-on être mieux’ were they going to see? The answer is given in the overture, composed by Pierre-Julien Nargeot, the music director of the Théâtre des Variétés, which begins with a full-fledged quotation of Grétry's music (in the original key of A major and mirroring the original orchestration), but immediately thumbs its nose at it (see Ex 2).¹⁷

Ex. 2 Où peut-on être mieux, Overture, beginning

There will be no sentiment here, nor will there be any politics (which would not have passed the censors anyway). Indeed, the comédie-vaudeville turns out to be cynical satire on the idea of ‘happy families’. It takes place in contemporary Paris with the following cast of characters: Mélinet, a wealthy bachelor; Christophe, his cousin; Anatole, his second cousin; Davrigny, a young dandy; Cornélie, Christophe's wife; Victorine, their daughter; Madame Grillon, housekeeper.

The plot of the comédie-vaudeville is actually a satire of a well-known play, Le Vieux Célibataire, by Colin d'Harville, first performed at the Théâtre de la Nation on 24 February 1792, and often revived, the latest revival having been at the Théâtre-Français on 1 October 1851, close enough to the year of the comédie-vaudeville that we could assume that the revival was the direct impetus for the comédie-vaudeville's creation. In the play, the main character, M. Dubrillage, a wealthy bachelor, is turned against his worthy nephew (whom he has never met) by the lies of his housekeeper, Madame Évrard, who wishes to marry Dubrillage herself. Unbeknownst to both of them, the nephew has gotten himself hired as a servant in the household, and in the course of the play, manages to thwart Madame Évrard's schemes and show M. Dubrillage that living with a happy family is far superior to living surrounded by strangers.

The relationship of the comédie-vaudeville to the play is made clear in Scene 2, where Mélinet makes his entrance reading and quoting a passage from Le Vieux Célibataire (Act I, Scene 8) in which the nephew extolls the advantages of being surrounded by one's family. Just to make sure that the audience understands this, the title of the play is actually mentioned. But Mélinet then implies that he has been manipulated into reading this play about the virtues of living with one's family, and it soon becomes clear that the comédie-vaudeville is going to demonstrate the exact opposite of the play's message. Mélinet, like Dubrillage, is an old wealthy bachelor and has, like Dubrillage, a housekeeper, Madame Grillon. Like Dubrillage, he also has distant relations whom he had never met who are in his house when the comédie-vaudeville begins. But everything is reversed; the housekeeper is loyal to Mélinet and has no designs on him, and the family is not in disguise and is undisguisedly awful both to Mélinet and to Madame Grillon.¹⁸ In the end, it is they who are thwarted: Mélinet gets rid of them by paying them off and Madame Grillon remains to take care of him selflessly, without interfering with his family's inheritance when he dies, for which event she, as Mélinet says in the final line of the comédie-vaudeville, ‘tachera de vous faire l'attendre le plus longtemps possible’ (will attempt to make you wait for it as long as possible).

It is not hard to imagine that when the authors decided to produce this satire of being in the midst of a ‘happy family’ the signature tune of happy families with its inherent contradictions came to their minds as well. Hence the title of the comédie-vaudeville. But they went further than that. The melody of ‘Où peut-on être mieux’ is used in a unique way in this comédie-vaudeville; not as an air to be sung to different words and inserted into the text, but as a tune that Mélinet sings to himself with the original words and whose source he identifies, as he tries to assure himself that he really is in the bosom of a happy family; this makes the song at once diegetic (he knows that he is singing, and we know it, too) and an integral part of the ongoing verbal text. As it becomes more and more obvious to the audience (although not consciously to him) that the exact opposite is the case, Mélinet's increasing distraction and his obsessive refusal to see what is actually happening is manifested by his forgetting the original tune and singing the words of ‘Où peut-on être mieux’ to two other ‘well-known tunes’ (specified in the text), both of which were extremely old and could have been considered ‘folk songs’.

The first is the ‘Carillon de Dunkerque’ (Caveau 739).¹⁹ In Scene 13, Mélinet sings ‘Où peut-on être mieux’ to this air (see Ex. 3). To which Madame Grillon responds, ‘Tenez, voyez-vous, vous ne savez même plus l'air’ (Look, you no longer even remember the air), speaking for the audience which undoubtedly knew both tunes. The second tune is ‘Va-t'en voir s'ils viennent, Jean’ (Caveau 613), sung to ‘Où peut-on être mieux’ in Scene 17 as Mélinet insists that he is happy with his family (see Ex. 4).²⁰ To which Madame Grillon (and the audience) respond: ‘Vous le chantez, maintenant, sur l'air: va-t'en voir s'ils viennent, Jean’ (Now you are singing it to the air of Va-t'en voir s'ils viennent, Jean). Finally, when Mélinet and Madame Grillon have been driven to distraction and at each other's throats by Mélinet's ‘happy family’ (he threatens to fire her and send her back to her family while he remains with his, and she threatens to quit and do just that), they both sing ‘Où peut-on être mieux’ but this time to the original tune, which now represents anger and frustration, not peace and contentment. In this way ‘Où peut-on être mieux’, or rather the audience's memory of the original tune (the intertext), becomes an anti-leitmotif in the comédie-vaudeville (that is: unlike a Wagnerian leitmotif, we here notice that the correct tune has not recurred, and further, in its final appearance it signifies the opposite of what it signified in its first appearance).²¹ Without the audience's musical memory of airs connus, and its understanding of how they were supposed to be used in comédies-vaudevilles none of this would have worked.

Ex. 3 ‘Où peut-on être mieux’ sung to Caveau 739

Ex. 4 ‘Où peut-on être mieux’ Sung to Caveau 613

The preceding discussion demonstrates that it can sometimes be useful to know the origin and original context of airs connus. Therefore, one of the first things that we have to do when studying the music of comédies-vaudevilles is to track down the original sources of the airs. Sometimes, this is easy; the title leads to the ultimate source of the air.²² But sometimes, it is difficult; the title of the air leads nowhere. In preparing the Critical Report for my recent edition of the revue de fin d'année of 1857 at the Théâtre des Variétés, Ohé! les p'tits agneaux!, I attempted to track down the airs connus to their sources.²³ For the most part, I succeeded in this, but there was one air that completely defeated my attempts to find its source.

The Problem

Act I, Number 21 of Ohé! les p'tits agneaux! is the third in an uninterrupted sequence of airs that lead up to the climax of the Act. It is identified in the printed libretto as: ‘Air: Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’. Example 5 gives the vocal part along with the Bass line, taken from my edition.²⁴

This is a very long melody with a clear structure, A (11 bars)–B (4 bars)–B (4 bars)–C (2+2 bars)–C (2+2 bars)–A (11 bars)–A (11 bars), and a very simple harmonization consisting of I and V in F Major. When I tried to find the source of this air, I drew a complete blank. There is no air titled ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ in the Clé du caveau, looking at the music of each of the 2,350 airs in that publication in the off chance that I could find it was out of the question and Google searches of various combinations of ‘air’ and ‘bon bon bon’ only turned up references to Ohé! les p'tits agneaux! or to chocolate candies (Bonbons), so eventually I gave up and listed the air as ‘Unidentified’ in the Critical Report.²⁵ But as a result of obsessing about it, I also memorized it.

A Surprise

Among the very useful bits of information to be found on the Home Page of the indefatigable Offenbach scholar, performer and editor Jean-Christophe Keck is a list of Offenbach overtures that he had conducted with links to YouTube recordings of those overtures.²⁶ One that caught my eye because of its uniqueness, was the recording of the Overture to Le Bonhomme Jadis. This is not an Offenbach operetta, but is instead part of the incidental music Offenbach provided, as music director of the Comédie-Française, for the 1852 production of the play Le Bonhomme Jadis by Henri Murger, known to opera lovers as the author of Scènes de la vie de Bohème on which Puccini's opera La Bohème is based.²⁷ Since there are no editions and almost no recordings of any of the incidental music that Offenbach composed during his stint at the Comédie-Française (1850–55), my curiosity was aroused and I followed the link to the YouTube recording.²⁸

You may imagine my astonishment when I heard that this overture began with a full-fledged rendition of the air: ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ that I had been searching for in vain for years! Further, the autograph of the overture had come up for auction at Sotheby's in 2017 and they posted on their website an image of the first page which confirmed what my ears had told me. The air is used in its entirety at the beginning of the overture.²⁹ This was astounding, but it did not solve my problem since the air is not identified in the autograph. In fact, it left open the possibility that Offenbach had actually composed it.

One of the reviews of the first performance of Le Bonhomme Jadis appears to mention this overture and this air. In his review in the Gazette de France of 26 April 1852, M.-J. Brisset (Mathurin-Joseph Brisset) seems to refer to this air and identifies it as the air ‘Pon pon’ (very close to ‘Bon bon’), Number 99 of the Clé du caveau. He mentions it because the music, to him, emphasizes that the setting of the play (a contemporary Parisian attic apartment) and the characters, an old pensioner, a penniless young student, and a grisette (young working-class woman), were radically different from the settings and characters of most of the productions of the Comédie-Française (the classics of French drama). In fact, he even suggests that the venerable Comédie-Française had lowered itself to the level of the boulevard theatres.

The orchestra led us to this new step backward in the decline of drama: Fluff has been installed there without shame; and at the rise of the curtain, after the most droll variations on the air Pon, pon, number 99 of the Clé du caveau – we were not in the least surprised to see the palace of Phèdre and the salon of the Misanthrope reduced to the dimensions of an attic apartment of [productions of] the [Théâtre du] Vaudeville or the [Théâtre des] Variétés, and to hear in the wings a grisette singing a song that is accompanied by an orchestra playing a polka for the regular customers of a suburban dance hall on the ground floor.³⁰

Near the end of his review, Brisset refers to this tune again and definitely states that it was played in the overture. It had made such an impression that he considers the entire play to have been a prose couplet set to this tune: ‘This is the play Le Bonhomme Jadis, which is nothing more than a couplet in prose set to the tune of which we have spoken, which is the basis of the overture’.³¹

Problem solved, I thought. Unfortunately, Number 99 of the Clé du caveau does not correspond to ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ or to any of the melodies used in Offenbach's overture, nor did Numbers 66, 69 or 96 (numbers of which 99 might be a typo). Problem not solved. But this made me curious about Le Bonhomme Jadis, and the rest of the incidental music that Offenbach had provided for its production at the Comédie-Française. Since overtures to plays with music are often made up of melodies that will be heard later in the production, there was a good chance that the tune which began the overture would appear in the actual incidental music to Le Bonhomme Jadis. Perhaps the context of its use in the play could give a clue to its origins. It turns out that music in Le Bonhomme Jadis is anything but incidental.

The Context: Music, Intertextuality and Memory in Le Bonhomme Jadis, Story and Play

Le Bonhomme Jadis was originally published as a feuilleton in Le Corsaire on 15, 17 and 22 January 1849, and later in Henri Murger, Scènes de la vie de jeunesse (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1851). The title refers to the main character (we never learn his real name) and might be translated as ‘The Gentleman Who Lives in the Past’, or even ‘The Old Codger’. In the story, he is 65 years old, certainly an age that qualified as ‘old’ in 1849. But in his mind, he is still in his twenties. And he certainly has a more youthful outlook on life than his neighbour Octave, who actually is 20 years old, but lives like an old solitary bachelor, doesn't smoke, doesn't dance and doesn't have a mistress. The story specifies that they live in facing attic apartments (mansardes) on the top floor of an apartment building on located at the end of the rue de la Tour d'Auvergne where it intersects with the rue Rochechouart, just below Montmartre. This address was not chosen at random; in the early 1840s Murger had himself lived in a mansarde in the rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, as does Rodolphe in Scènes de la vie de Bohème.³² In 1849, Montmartre had not been incorporated into the city of Paris and was separated from Paris proper by a customs barrier called the mur d'octroi or mur des fermiers généraux which surrounded what were in 1849 the 12 arrondissements of Paris.³³ The mur d'octroi was pierced by a number of entry points called barrières where taxes were collected on all goods that entered the city.³⁴ Specifically, the rue de la Tour d'Auvergne is just below the Barrière des Martyrs at the beginning of the Boulevard des Martyrs (see Fig. 1). In the early nineteenth century many open-air taverns with dancing venues, called guinguettes were established near the barrières and two famous ones, L'Ermitage and L’Élysée, were near the Barrière des Martyrs.³⁵ This turns out to be of importance to the plot of the story.

Fig. 1 Detail of Nouveau plan complet de Paris avec ses fortifications, divisé en 12 Arrondissements et 48 Sections avec les principaux Monuments en Elévation donnant la Distance légale en Mètres des Forts Détachés aux Murs d'Enceinte et aux Murs d'Octroi, indiquant la Population et les Fêtes Patronales des Environs de Paris. Gravé sur Acier par J. N. Henriot showing the Barrière des Martyrs (Number 30), the rue de la Tour d'Auvergne and the rue Rochechouart Bibliothèque nationale de France

The story takes place on a Sunday evening of the day of the Bonhomme's sixty-fifth birthday, which is the same day as Octave's twentieth birthday, and the Bonhomme invites Octave to share his birthday dinner (which he prepares himself). While they are eating, dance music from the nearby guinguettes of Montmartre is occasionally heard through the open windows (Sunday evenings were precisely the times that the guinguettes would have been full of dancers, and it is not hard to imagine that Murger is drawing here on the memory of his own aural experiences when he lived in the rue de la Tour d'Auvergne.). The music inspires the Bonhomme to want to go dancing (not Octave, who doesn't know how to dance). One melody in particular has a particular effect on the Bonhomme, calling up memories of his youth.

At this moment, the wind that blew in from the heights of Montmartre brought the sounds of an old popular tune newly arranged as a quadrille, and a neighbouring musician who was practicing the oboe at his open window began repeating the tune played by the orchestra of the barrière.

The bonhomme Jadis, who had suddenly fallen silent when he heard the distant sounds of this music, trembled and abruptly stood up when the neighbour oboist repeated the tune, not a note of which was lost.³⁶

The Bonhomme explains to Octave that this melody had been his favourite when he was a young man in Burgundy, in love with a girl called Jacqueline. On hearing the dance orchestra of the guinguette and the neighbour oboist playing the melody, he suddenly decides that he (the 65-year old) has to go dancing, and he drags Octave (the 20-year-old who doesn't know how to dance) out to visit the guinguettes of Monmartre. In particular, he wants to dance to the quadrille of his favourite tune and is disappointed when he doesn't hear it. He then tells Octave how the tune affected him when he a soldier.

‘This is very annoying’, said the bonhomme to Octave, ‘I no longer hear my tune and would really have liked to dance to it’.

‘You would dare … in front of everybody!’ said Octave in a worried voice.

‘And why not? I dared to do other things when I heard that tune. Listen, when I was a soldier, because of Jacqueline, you know, I was more-or-less your age, and I certainly was not a paragon of valour. Thus, the first time that I found myself facing the Austrians on the plains of Lombardy, I really regretted my native Burgundy and the violin of Big Blaise, and if I had been offered the chance to leave the army, I would have taken it. When I heard the first cannon shot – it was a terrible scene, smoke, death cries! I was not happy. Our commander shouted: Brave soldiers, it is our turn; Charge! … the charge was directly at the canons. All my comrades ran as if they were going to a party, as for me, I was not enthusiastic … but lo and behold, the band of the regiment that was already in position decided to play my favourite tune tra déri déri déra. Me, so pliant, so peaceful, I had barely heard the refrain when I turned into a lion. I grew a mane, and there I was at the head of my squadron, charging at the Austrian lines. The tip of my sabre raised, thundering away and singing my little tune: tra déri déri déri – I charged like the devil. – All of a sudden, I came across a big guy in full uniform carrying a banner. Tra deri, that would make a nice dress for Jacqueline, I said to myself, and I fell upon him, deri dera, – I cut him in two, – Tra deri; – I took his banner from him, deri dera, – the general embraced me, my name was placed on the order of the day of the army … and the Republic awarded me a sabre d'honneur. Tra deri dera, la la deri’.³⁷

The sound of his favourite tune played by a military band and the memories it inspired turned the Bonhomme into a hero. The reference to fighting the Austrians on the ‘plains of Lombardy’ and to the Republic makes it almost certain that the Bonhomme is referring here to Napoleon's Italian campaigns, most likely to the campaign of 1799–1800, perhaps even to the Battle of Marengo (14 June 1800), which plays such an important role in the opera Tosca.

The guinguette orchestra then begins to play a quadrille based on this tune, and the Bonhomme looks around for someone to dance with. Dragging Octave along with him, he approaches Clarisse, a young woman who works as a teacher in a girls’ school on the rue Rochechouart across from the apartment building where the Bonhomme and Octave live. She doesn't want to dance. Suddenly it begins to rain and the outside dance is over. The Bonhomme, Octave and Clarisse take cover and wait a long time for the rain to stop. When the rain stops, the Bonhomme and Octave escort Clarisse back to her building on the rue Rochechouart and help her to convince the concierge to let her in even though it is very late. Octave in particular is very vocal in her behalf. She is grateful. She sends Octave a note of thanks. One day the Bonhomme hears laughter coming from Octave's apartment. Octave has found a mistress and happiness, all because the Bonhomme was inspired by memories conjured by hearing his favourite tune to take Octave to the guinguettes of Montmartre. So ends the story in which the dance music of the guinguettes serves a dual function: it advances the plot and is the direct cause of the happy dénouement, and the Bonhomme's reaction to the music reveals that although he is actually 65 years old, he is much more of a 20-year-old than his young neighbour.

It was perhaps the centrality of music to the story that inspired Murger to turn it into a one-act comédie-vaudeville where the music could be made manifest (meaning that there would have been interpolated couplets sung to airs connus, as well as the dance music), which he offered to the boulevard theatres in 1850.³⁸ It was rejected by all of them, but Murger did not give up and submitted Le Bonhomme Jadis as a straight play (no couplets) to the Comédie-Française which accepted it by 17 August 1851 and gave it its first performance on 21 April 1852.

In turning the story into a play, Murger changed a number of things. There are still three characters. The Bonhomme (who is now 60, not 65) and Octave (who is still 20) remain more or less as they were in the story, but Murger fleshed out the character of the young woman, Clarisse, now a grisette called Jacqueline (the name of the Bonhomme's old girlfriend) and given a major role.³⁹ Murger also changed the plot of the story in which a chance meeting leads to Octave's finding a mistress into the kind of intrigue that was common in comédies of this sort: Octave is now secretly in love with Jacqueline, something the Bonhomme learns and manoeuvres to bring the two young people together by inviting them both to his birthday dinner and pretending to seduce Jacqueline himself, rousing Octave's jealousy to the point that he declares his love for Jacqueline. The Bonhomme then facilitates the eventual marriage of Octave and Jacqueline by using his savings to provide her dowry. The setting was still the Bonhomme's apartment, and it is specified that the action takes place in the year 1840 on a Sunday between the hours of 6 p.m. struck by a clock at the beginning, and 8 p.m. struck by a clock at the end. As in the story, this is a time when the guinguettes of Montmartre would have been full of dancers, but in the play there could be no visiting the guinguettes, since that would have required a change of set. Nor could there be a rainstorm on stage, so the entire act takes place in one set.⁴⁰

But, since hearing dance music was so central to the plot, it is specified that a guinguette de barrière is below the apartment building in which the Bonhomme, Octave and Jacqueline all live (the exact location of the building is not given, but the guinguette is said to be en bas). So instead of music wafting in the windows from the heights of Montmartre, it is now heard from below, and is therefore clear, distinct and diegetic, heard and commented on by the characters a number of times, particularly at the beginning (when the curtain rises) and at the end (when the clock strikes 8 and Octave announces that he is now 20 years old).⁴¹ So although Murger's play for the Comédie-Française could not have the interpolated couplets of the comédie-vaudeville, it still depended on music heard by the characters and the audience. And it is here that Offenbach enters the picture.

Offenbach's Incidental Music for Le Bonhomme Jadis

Offenbach had been engaged at the music director of the Comédie-Française in October 1850. His duties including supplying overtures, entr'actes, and incidental music when needed for the productions, but also, and more importantly, in reviving the moribund orchestra of the Comédie-Française by expanding its membership and insuring the competence of its musicians and also paying them out of his own salary.⁴² Offenbach succeeded in this last task, as was noted in the Press, which marvelled at the new sound of the orchestra.⁴³

Since music, in particular orchestral dance music, plays such an important part in Le Bonhomme Jadis, it would have fallen to Offenbach to provide the musical numbers. He clearly had composed an overture. By his own admission, he also composed other music for the play.⁴⁴ Consultation of the online catalogue of the library of the Comédie-Française, confirmed that the library contained the performing parts for the incidental music to the play.⁴⁵

There are actually two sets of performing parts for Le Bonhomme Jadis, both of them in the hands of copyists. They are both titled ‘Le Bonhomme Jadis’, and contain the same music as regards melody and harmony, but they differ radically in orchestration and organization. They also both contain the ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ air that is so prominent in the overture. One (Comédie-Française (CF), Partitions, 6 P4 100) is described in the catalogue as: ‘Musique de Jacques Offenbach pour la création à la Comédie-Française du “Bonhomme jadis” de Henri Murger, le 21 avril 1852: 14 parties séparées (cinq sections musicales)’ (Music by Jacques Offenbach for the first performance at the Comédie-Française of Le Bonhomme Jadis by Henri Murger, 21 April 1852: 14 separate parts (five musical sections)). It contains music for an orchestra consisting of piccolo, flute, oboe, clarinet in B-flat, bassoon, horn in F, two trumpets in C, strings, piano and many percussion instruments, requiring two players (tambour de basque, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, wood block, timpani, grelots [sleighbells] castanets, caisse claire [snare drum]), labelled ‘Le Bonhomme Jadis, Offenbach’ on the cover pages of all the parts. There are five numbers, labelled I–V along with performance directions (rehearsal letters, articulation marks and up-bow and down-bow signs added in pencil in the strings), but no cue lines relating the music to the play. Number V of this set is a full rendition of the ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ air.

Another set of parts (CF, Partitions, 6 P4 101) is described in the catalogue as: ‘Musique de [compositeur non identifié] pour une reprise à la Comédie-Française du “Bonhomme jadis” de Henri Murger: 4 parties séparées’ (Music by [unidentified composer] for a revival at the Comédie-Française of Le Bonhomme Jadis by Henri Murger: four separate parts). It contains seven numbers, 1–7, which reproduce the music of the numbers of 6 P4 100 in a different order with repetitions, scored for a string ensemble (violin 1, violin 2, viola, cello, contrabass).⁴⁶ No composer is mentioned. Number 6 of this set, is a full rendition of the ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ air. Neither set of parts contains the overture that Keck recorded.

Of these sources, only 6 P4 101 can plausibly be historically associated with Offenbach and with performances of the play at the Comédie-Française during his lifetime. It is copied in a nineteenth-century hand and contains cue lines (lines which are said either immediately before or close to a stage direction indicating that music from the downstairs guinguette is heard) and is therefore directly related to a performance of the play in the nineteenth century. And even though it lacks a composer attribution, Offenbach's authorship is confirmed by his own admission and by the overture that Keck recorded, since the overture is comprised almost entirely of two of the musical numbers in 6 P4 101: the ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ theme (Number 6) followed by the theme of Number 1.

6 P4 100, on the other hand, in spite of the catalogue entry which suggests that it was created for the first performance of Le Bonhomme Jadis, dates from late twentieth century, as Roxane Martin has already observed.⁴⁷ In fact, these parts are connected to and probably were prepared for La Comédie des musiciens: trois siècles de musiques au Théâtre-Français, first performed at the Comédie-Française on 22 December 1987. This event, the brainchild of Michel Frantz, then the music director of the Comédie-Française, and Philippe Rondest, presented music that had been composed for the theatre over three centuries. Twenty-four excerpts of incidental music by composers ranging from Lully to Frantz himself were performed by an orchestra assembled and conducted by Frantz. The programme can be found in Frantz's memoirs and also in a CD of the performance.⁴⁸ Offenbach's incidental music for Le Bonhomme Jadis ended the first part of the concert. The performance on the CD confirms that the parts in 6 P4 100 were used for this event (numbers I–V were played without interruption in the concert). Further, the extant score for the items from Le Bonhomme Jadis in this concert is in the same hand that copied the parts.⁴⁹ The score and the parts attribute the music to ‘Offenbach’ but they seem clearly to reflect a modern orchestration of the music found in 6 P4 101 (the nineteenth-century source), including instruments (piano, wood block, sleigh bells) that never appear in any authentic Offenbach orchestration that I know of. The music is ‘by’ Offenbach in the same way that Pictures at an Exhibition in Ravel's orchestration is ‘by’ Mussorgsky.⁵⁰

As mentioned above, 6 P4 101contains the music that accompanied performances of Le Bonhomme Jadis in the Nineteenth century. But since the play remained in the repertory of the Comédie-Française for a very long time, it cannot be automatically assumed that 6 P4 101 was used at the first performance in 1852.⁵¹ There is, however, some evidence that it was.

Two of the reviews of Le Bonhomme Jadis refer specifically to the music at the point in the play where the Bonhomme, inspired by a melody played by the guinguette orchestra, recites his military memory (the text in the play repeats almost verbatim the speech in the story). Théophile Gautier, writing in La Presse on 3 May 1852, in praising the actors particularly Provost, refers to the staging of this moment:

Provost, Delaunay and Mlle Fix acted to perfection in this pretty skit, which is worth more, even though it lasts barely three-quarters of an hour, than many dramas and comedies in five acts. One can't find an old gent more amiable than Provost: he makes one long to have white hair. What youthful heartfulness, and what vivid communication, when he hears in the distance the violins of the guinguette play a tune from his youth, he hums along joyously remembering his love for Jacqueline and his soldierly prowess, because in love and in war it was with this favourite tune that he triumphed.⁵²

In the Revue de Paris Mme A. R. de Beauvoir (Léocadie-Aimée de Beauvoir) refers, as did Gautier, to this point in the play, but in a different context. Like Brisset in the passage quoted earlier, Beauvoir notes that the setting and the action of the play were more fitting for a vaudeville theatre than for the Comédie-Française. She then adds another detail: that it was obvious that at this place in the text a vaudevillian couplet set to an air connu was intended. But since that could not happen at the Comédie-Française, the problem was finessed by having the actor hum the tune ‘while the violins played the tune in the wings’ instead.⁵³

The point is that both of these reviewers refer specifically to violins in the wings playing the tune, with Provost humming along, in other words, they describe the music preserved in 6 P4 101. In fact, a string ensemble (perhaps only one player to a part) hidden in the wings and playing softly (they are often instructed to use mutes), fits the idea of an unseen guinguette orchestra which interrupts (or accompanies?) a text which often mentions hearing the violins of that orchestra.

The Appendix to this article presents the melodic lines of the incidental music, taken from the violin 1 of 6 P4 101. The first numbers are the type that could have been heard in a guinguette. Number 1 is clearly a waltz and is so labelled. Numbers 2–5 are in standard dance meters (6/8, 2/4). The dances are not easily identified, although Number 5 could be a Polka or a Galop. Number 6 is the ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ air. As 6 P4 101 makes clear, this was to be played at the point where the Bonhomme relates his military memory. 6 P4 101 is also very specific about the way the music is coordinated with the text. The first phrase was apparently played twice, first loudly, then softly: the first time, the Bonhomme listens to the beginning of the melody, the second time, he sings along as the tune continues to the end. Then as he relates the details of his military triumph, short phrases of the piece were to be repeated at specific points in the speech. This makes Number 6 the most extended musical interlude in the play (See Fig. 2. The Appendix reproduces the speech and its music following the directions of 6 P4 101).

Fig. 2 6 P4 101, Number 6, Violin 1 ©Coll. Comédie-Française

Fig. 3 Index of the fourth edition of the Clé du caveau containing airs named after marches Bibliothèque nationale de France

The music is marked ‘Allegro marziale’ and has the ‘march’ time signature of cut C. This differentiates it from the other numbers, all of which are clearly dances. Anyone who recognized this as a march would also know that marches are not things one dances to. The intertextual meaning of Number 6 (not a dance but a march) connects it with the meaning of the text (Jadis's military memory), but paradoxically not with what he is actually supposed to be hearing, which is a dance played by a guinguette orchestra.⁵⁴

Whoever created the modern orchestration of 6 P4 100 also recognized that Number 6 was a march, since it is orchestrated for what is essentially a military band: winds, brass, timpani and snare drum, with the contrabass reinforcing the bass line (no other strings or piano). Further, the key in 6 P4 100 is A-flat major while the key in 6 P4 101 is G major (band music tends to be in flat keys).⁵⁵ And this, the tune presented in the context of a military memory in the play and represented as a military march in 6 P4 101 and 6 P4 100, gave me the answer to my intertextual question about the origin of ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’. In fact, in a true instance of a characteristic of intertextuality described by Burkholder as existing ‘outside of history’, where a listener ‘may notice intertextual relationships between pieces whose composers were unaware of each other, or may hear pieces as in conversation with each other and derive meaning and fresh insights from that dialogue irrespective of chronology or influence’, it was the non-Offenbach twentieth-century orchestration for military band that made me recognize the tune as a military march and really gave me my answer.⁵⁶

Offenbach the Memory Man: Problem Solved

Did Offenbach compose the ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ air as a military march or was it instead a real military march, not a new composition? It turns out that the Clé du caveau has a number of airs that are identified as marches. They are all listed in one of the indexes of the fourth edition. One of the marches is titled La Marche suisse (Caveau 1740; see Fig. 3).

Caveau 1740 turns out to be the melody I knew as ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’, the melody used by Offenbach, presented here in the same key (F Major) as Number 21 of Ohé, les p'tits agneaux! (See Ex. 5 and Fig. 4). ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ was actually the Marche suisse. It was a real air connu. Offenbach did not compose it, but merely harmonized and orchestrated it. He was in effect acting here as the ‘memory man’ of Balzac's trio of comédie-vaudeville authors, finding an appropriate air connu to be ‘inserted into the situation’, the situation being one which required an ‘old tune’ which also could serve as a march played by a military band, in what Mme de Beauvoir recognized as a place that called for an intertextual vaudevillian couplet. In fact, Offenbach might very well have done exactly what I did: consulted the Clé du caveau, looked in the index for marches and picked one that he liked, Caveau 1740. Along with Balzac, he knew how comédies-vaudevilles were created.⁵⁷ And because he did, he solved my problem of identification; the nineteenth century spoke directly to the twenty-first.

Fig. 4 Number 1740 of the Clé du caveau Bibliothèque nationale de France

Ex. 5 Ohé! les p'tits agneaux!, Number 21, voice and bass line

The air called La Marche suisse

In the fourth edition of the Clé du caveau, Pierre Capelle, the editor, attempts to identify the original sources of the 2,350 airs in the publication.⁵⁸ He often succeeds in identifying the actual composers of the airs, but sometimes he only refers to a comédie-vaudeville where the air appears, perhaps for the first time. This is what happens for Caveau 1740 which is identified as ‘Air d'une marche suisse employé dans L'Intrigue impromptu vaudeville’. This is a reference to the appearance of Caveau 1740 in L'Intrigue impromptu ou l'n’y a plus d'enfans, Comédie-Vaudeville en un acte by Joseph Marie Armand, Michel Dieulafoy and Nicolas Gersin, first performed at the Théâtre du Vaudeville on 4 November 1809, Scène V: Air d'une marche suisse. The context is a description of a horse race, and the long and irregular lyric (65 lines), which must have been set to the already existing melody of the Marche suisse evokes the excitement of the occasion, through the use of nonsense syllables (‘tran, tran’, ‘flon, flon’, etc.); the similarity of a wild horse race to a cavalry charge may have been what inspired the choice of an air with military associations. This lyric appears in the fourth edition of the Clé du caveau as the model for lyrics to be set to Caveau 1740 and is clearly the model for the lyric for ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ in Ohé! les p'tits agneaux! ⁵⁹

Searching for ‘Air: marche suisse’ on Google and other search engines turned up a number of other comédies-vaudevilles produced between 1809 and 1843 that employ the air, the lyrics in each occasion clearly modelled on the lyric of L'Intrigue impromptu, most beginning with nonsense syllables (see Table 1).

Table 1 Instances of the marche suisse in comédies-vaudevilles, 1809–1843

This list is not exhaustive, but it certainly points to the popularity of the air. It clearly had become current by 1809, although in fact it is not in the first edition of the Clé du caveau (1811) which only lists 891 airs, nor is it in the second edition of 1816 which expands the number to 1500. The first appearance of the air in the Clé occurs in the third edition of 1827 which expands the number of airs to 2,050, and it is in all subsequent editions. The list also shows that the air had been used at the Théâtre des Variétés as early as 1819 and may also provide the answer to the question of why the Variétés productions of the 1850s refer to the Marche suisse as ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’. Those words are the first words of the lyric set to the Marche suisse in Le Remplaçant, ou l'orphelin, first performed in 1828. It is possible that the first time the air was given the ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ title at the Variétés the authors of that comédie-vaudeville were referring to the first words of the lyric in the 1828 Tableau militaire. The air is always associated with a long descriptive lyric, what was known as a couplet de facture. Further, the lyric usually describes something exciting (hence, the use of nonsense syllables). This is certainly the case of the horse race related in L'Intrigue impromptu, and also in Ohé! Les p'tits agneaux! where the lyric of Number 21 describes the passage of time in wine production, from the awakening of the vines in the spring to the potentially destructive storms of the summer to the joyous harvest (vendange) in the fall (see Ex. 5). So even if the actual source of the air remains a mystery, its intertextual meaning established by its first appearance in a comédie-vaudeville (something exciting is happening and it will take a long time to relate it) seems to have been recognized by the creators of other comédies-vaudevilles. And that is what Offenbach also recognized when he chose Caveau 1740 to accompany the description of an infantry charge (see Appendix). This is what the discovery of the true timbre of the air reveals.

Airs connus and Offenbach's Incidental Music for Le Bonhomme Jadis

Since Offenbach, acting as the memory man, employed a known air for Number 6 of 6 P4 101, did he similarly use airs for the other musical interpolations? This is another one of those questions that are not easy to answer, but there is some evidence to suggest that the waltz of Number 1, the music that according to 6 P4 101 both opens and closes the play (and is repeated during the play as well – see Appendix), was in fact an original composition. Not that I could find it among the waltzes that Offenbach published. The evidence is of a different nature: that the melody turns up in a work Offenbach composed a year after the first performance of Le Bonhomme Jadis.

On 28 October 1853, Offenbach's opéra comique Pépito was premiered at the Théâtre des Variétés. I have dealt with the historical circumstances of this production elsewhere.⁶⁰ In a recent study, I point to places in the score where Offenbach reused or originally intended to reuse music that he had previously composed.⁶¹ Considering that, it may be more than a coincidence that the opening phrase of Number 1 of 6 P4 101 seems to appear in a section of the long ensemble which is Number 5 of the Pépito score (see Ex. 6).

Ex. 6 Comparison of 6 P4 101, Number 1 and an excerpt from Number 5 of Pépito

Since airs connus were not a part of the music of Pépito, this may be another self-quotation, although whether it is deliberate or accidental is not clear. If so, it would suggest that the Numbers 1–5 of 6 P4 101 are original compositions, Offenbach employing an air connu only where the text of the play called for an air connu.

Conclusion

In a recent article about intertextuality, Paulo F. de Castro writes that the word text: ‘derives from the Latin textus (or the verb texere, meaning ‘to weave’), thus pointing us back to the image of the network, the web and the tissue (the textile) rather than the inscription’.⁶² I suggest that this article discusses such an intertextual web or network whose disparate strands (couplets in comédie-vaudevilles, instrumental incidental music for a play) are knit together by the thread of musical memory. Musical memory was intrinsic to the way audiences experienced the airs connus in comédies-vaudevilles. The satire of Où peut-on être mieux depended on the audience remembering the words and context of the source air. My memory of ‘Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon, bon’ allowed me to recognize its quotation in the Overture to Le Bonhomme Jadis. In the story and play, the Bonhomme Jadis's memory of a particular tune inspires him to relate a military anecdote. Offenbach, the ‘memory man’ chose the Marche suisse to accompany the Bonhomme's military memory and thus solved my problem. And this in turn was the result of Murger's decision, inspired by his memories of hearing the music of the guinguettes of Montmartre, to include that music in his story and play. The theatrical world of Paris in the nineteenth century was truly an intertextual lieu de mémoire.⁶³

A Note on the Overture to Le Bonhomme Jadis

The score of the overture to Le Bonhomme Jadis is the only source of the music for the play that is in Offenbach's hand, yet the overture is not in in the music sources preserved in the library of the Comédie-Française (6 P4 101 and its derivative 6 P4 100). This lacuna could be explained in a number of ways. First, if the parts of 6 P4 101were really used by an off-stage ensemble, then perhaps the players were already in place when the performance began and did not participate in the overture. Second, Offenbach could have removed the material for the overture when he left the Comédie-Française in 1855. It is also possible that the overture was created for another occasion in which Le Bonhomme Jadis was performed. On 25 April 1852 (four days after the premiere of Le Bonhomme Jadis), Offenbach presented his annual benefit concert in the Salle Herz. The advertisement announcing this concert that appeared in Le Ménestrel on 18 April 1852 reported that it would include among other things, a new play written expressly for the occasion by Henri Murger, to be performed by actresses from the Comédie-Française. On 23 April 1852, Le Siècle reported that Le Bonhomme Jadis had replaced the new play by Murger. The complete programme is not given in the Press reports but it is mentioned that along with Le Bonhomme Jadis performed by the original cast: Jean-Baptiste Provost, Louis-Arsène Delaunay and Delphine Fix, the audience would hear Offenbach's work for six cellos and contrabass (Reminiscences à ‘Robert le Diable’ de Giacomo Meyerbeer), comic songs performed by Pierre-Thomas Levassor from the troupe of the Théâtre du Palais-Royal and a recitation of Arsène Houssaye's Les Larmes de Jacqueline by Delphine Fix. The reviews of the actual concert are not very informative, but they do mention the novelty of the performance of Le Bonhomme Jadis and Fix's recitation.

Neither the announcements of the concerts nor the reviews mention the presence of an orchestra. Yet it would have been impossible to perform Le Bonhomme Jadis without the music which was so central to the action. That means at the very least a string ensemble to perform the music in 6 P4 101. But Offenbach may also have recruited the full orchestra of the Comédie-Française, which he not only led but also paid, to take part in his benefit. Perhaps this was also when he composed the overture that Keck recorded. On the other hand, we know from Brisset's review quoted at the beginning of this essay, that there was an overture played at the first performance. The problem is that his description of it as consisting of variations on Caveau 99 does not fit the music of the overture we have. Again, there could be a simple explanation: Brisset recognized an air connu in the overture but could not remember its real Caveau number and chose one at random. On the other hand, maybe he really did hear Caveau 99, which would mean that an overture different from the one we have which has left no trace in the sources was performed.