Send in the clown

The tears of a clown have often fallen on fertile operatic ground. Think of Rigoletto and I Pagliacci; or The Yeomen of the Guard, where mock-Tudor merriment turns to ash in the mouth of the jester Jack Point. But what if the composer himself is the buffoon? Jacques Offenbach was the court jester of France’s Second Empire, and if he’s still (inaccurately) regarded as an essentially frivolous talent, well, let’s be blunt: his 100-plus stage works do include sentient vegetables, scenes of mass flatulence and at least one opera in which the title role is taken by a performing dog....