A summer ritual for the wealthy and the nobility through the mid-nineteenth century, until the Franco-Prussian War, was a visit to a fashionable hot springs—Baden-Baden, for instance, or Bad Ems—offering guests, in addition to the "cure," sumptuous accommodations, salubrious dining, social promenading, gambling, and light entertainment newly minted by the foremost composers of the era. On a commission from Baden-Baden, Berlioz rounded off his career with Béatrice et Bénédict in 1862. Delibes and Gounod also composed for the spas. Offenbach's La princesse de Trébizonde was written for Baden in 1869, though he composed no less than eight one- and two-act operettas and opera-bouffes for Bad Ems—Les bavards (1862), Il signor Fagotto, and Lischen et Fritzchen (both 1863); Le soldat magicien and Jean qui pleure et Jean qui rit (both 1864); Coscoletto (1865); and La permission de dix heures and La Leçon de chant electromagnétique (both 1867). Given the furious pace at which the astoundingly prolific Offenbach wrote, the upshot was uneven, though Les bavards and Lischen et Fritzchen are still occasionally revived and both have contributed numbers beloved of operetta aficionados. Coscoletto, on the other hand, seems to have been buried beneath the phenomenal Parisian successes preceding and following it—La belle Hélène in 1864 and La vie parisienne in 1866. Coscoletto was never seen in Paris and has been given only a sparse number of times since, mainly in German-speaking cities—Vienna (1866) and Nürnberg (1992). Sung in French at Bad Ems for a 2001 Cologne production and recorded by West German Radio (WDR), Coscoletto had sunk so far into oblivion that a French libretto could not be found and the revival was given in German, while the score was pieced together from materials in the Offenbach Collection of the Historical Archive of Cologne and the manuscript holdings of German publisher Bote & Bock. The libretto, originally by Offenbach's inveterate comedy team of Charles Nuitter and Etienne Tréfeu (enlisted when he could not prod libretti from the authors of his greatest successes, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy) works a vein of zany farce—mistaken identity, jealousy, foiled intrigue, bizarre characters (Frangipani, or the apothecary Arsenico)—harking back to Goldoni and Gozzi. Though it lacks the audacious novelty and consistently surefire invention of such things as La vie parisienne or La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, every page bears the imprint of a master hand to make a fast-paced whole leading to a startling reversal and trademark Offenbach effervescent finale.

© Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide