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.