Barbe-Bleue is one of those Offenbach productions showing the composer near the top of his bent, but not quite among his surefire best. The book, which he cajoled from his superstar team of Meilhac and Halévy, is a jolly affair in which the monster of Perrault's fairytale is transformed into a deceived husband, of sorts, while in Boulotte, the crafty peasant girl who becomes Bluebeard's sixth wife, they created something far better than the stock soubrette, indeed, a character of character, so to speak, whose part was winningly taken by the already legendary Hortense Schneider for the astronomical sum of 300 francs per performance. In the hierarchy of Offenbach operettas, it is enough to say that Barbe-Bleue, opening at the Variétés on February 5,1866, followed the long run of La belle Hélène, to be succeeded by La Vie parisienne (on October 31, 1866) and La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein (on April 12, 1867), with La Périchole (on October 6, 1868) on the horizon. Those works are immortal by virtue of their strong books matched by Offenbach's unflagging invention, spanking pace, and scores in which the usual stock-in-trade crudities of the comique genre are lifted into an almost Mozartian elegance. By contrast, Barbe-Bleue often seems to have been composed by a very skillful imitator of Offenbach, and, in fact, the composer cobbled the work together, occasionally lifting numbers from past works. Some of the newly composed music, however, partook of the brilliance of the period Offenbach had entered—the aria "Qu'un bon courtesans s'incline" was an immediate sensation. The composer spared no expense for sets and costumes, and Schneider, for her Boulotte, was hailed as "the Malibran of musical comedy." The show was a hit, moving to London's Olympic Theatre in a one-act version, Blue Beard Repaired (on June 2, 1866), appearing as Blaubart at Vienna's Theater an der Wien on September 21, 1866, and eventually reaching New York's Grand Opera House (on December 21, 1870), to enjoy revivals in all three cities within a few years. As with such other Offenbach vehicles as Geneviève de Brabant (1859), Die Rheinnixen (1864), Coscoletto (1865), Robinson Crusoé (1867), and Les Brigands (1869), among others—ambitious works of two or three extended acts—Barbe-Bleue remains more expert than inspired. Indeed, these works entertain expertly while including enough of Offenbach's best to remain eternally tantalizing, hovering on the fringes of the comique repertoire and worthy of occasional revival, without quite achieving the incandescence the composer's name leads one to expect.

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