Robinson Crusoé
1867 opéra comique by Jacques Offenbach, Eugène Cormon, and Hector-Jonathan Crémieux / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Robinson Crusoé?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Robinson Crusoé is an opéra comique with music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Eugène Cormon and Hector-Jonathan Crémieux. It premiered in Paris on 23 November 1867.
The writers took the theme from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, though the work owes more to British pantomime than to the book itself. Crusoé leaves his family in England and runs away to sea. He is marooned on an island with only his friend and helper Vendredi (Man Friday) for company. His fiancée and two family servants come to the island in search of him, and after narrow escapes from cannibals and pirates they seize the pirates' ship and set sail for home.
The opera was written for the prestigious Opéra-Comique in Paris, his second work for that theatre, following the unsuccessful Barkouf seven years earlier. The music is on a grander scale than that of most of the composer's earlier works. The opera was well received but ran for only 32 performances. In the 20th century it was not revived until the 1970s (in London) and was not seen again at the Opéra-Comique until 1986.