ABSTRACT
THE FRANCO-Prussian War (1870) did not immediately change the taste of Parisians for certain kinds of operetta, but it was a decisive blow against opéra-bouffe. Before the war, Second Empire frivolity sanctioned entertainments that were lighthearted, silly, boisterous, licentious (certainly by British standards), and satirical, with the accent clearly on gaiety. The pettiness of the court and government of Napoléon III and the specter of Bismarck had already been alluded to in two offenbachiades: La Périchole and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, and by the late 1860s there were critics already condemning the satire in the libretti, possibly because these situations were simply becoming too serious to satirize.
