work
La Belle Hélène
also: Бель Элен, La belle Hélène
Jacques Offenbach's 1864 comic operetta retelling the Helen of Troy story as farce. This piece's joke names the operetta itself, not Homer's Helen, as the cause of the Trojan War -- a deliberate displacement of myth by contemporary stage entertainment.
Reading notes
- From the Notebook of Ivan Ivanych (Thoughts and Notes) §8 La Belle Hélène
Jacques Offenbach's 1864 comic operetta retelling the Helen of Troy story as farce. Naming the operetta, rather than Homer's Helen, as the Trojan War's cause is a deliberate joke -- contemporary stage frivolity displacing epic myth.