On May 6, 1876, the French luxury steamer Canada arrived in New York on its maiden voyage from Le Havre. Aboard was the composer and conductor Jacques Offenbach, making his only American tour.

Born in 1819 as Jakob Offenbach, the son of a cantor in Cologne, he went to Paris at 14. Jakob became Jacques and, while playing in the Opera-Comique’s orchestra, began composing, “dashing off three waltzes before lunch and a mazurka after dinner.” Despite lifelong ill health – gout and rheumatism were daily companions – he could write, orchestrate, and produce a one-act piece in a week. Thus, from 1855 to 1880, he created more than 90 high-spirited operettas, whose witty dialogue and sparkling tunes made them the rage of the Western world, and made the once-bawdy cancan incarnate the frivolous, cynical spirit of the French Second Empire. Even Napoleon III smiled during “Orpheus in the Underworld” and “La Belle Helene,” which satirized contemporary politics thinly disguised as classical legend.

Offenbach worked at home, claiming he could create only amid the happy tumult of family life. A promoter, Lino Bacquero, found him there in 1875 and persuaded Offenbach to conduct 30 concerts in New York for the next year’s Centennial of American independence – by offering $30,000, cash in advance.

Offenbach embarked on April 21, 1876, telling reporters that as a veteran of many premieres, he had no fear of being present for the ship’s debut. Seasickness? He replied, “My health is so delicate I haven’t the strength to be ill.” While waiting to come ashore, he was repeatedly interviewed by ship-news reporters, doing “everything I could not to be completely stupid.” The New York Sun’s man found Offenbach “a pleasant looking gentleman,” with a face “somewhat thinner and more deeply furrowed with wrinkles” than expected. “He has a fresh, lively way of speaking and acting and his face is always lit up by a smile,” the newspaper said.

Offenbach’s arrival coincided with the height of his American vogue. Some years before, the shady financier James “Jubilee Jim” Fisk’s productions of “La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein” and “La Belle Helene” at the Grand Opera House at West 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue had introduced the composer to American theatergoers. Thus, Offenbach arrived at the Fifth Avenue Hotel to find a huge banner strung across the facade, “WELCOME OFFENBACH,” with an orchestra playing his music while a crowd roared “Vive Offenbach!” He was feted everywhere, and he quipped that if he had eaten all that was put before him, he would not have returned alive.

Gilmore’s Gardens, where Offenbach gave his first New York concert, stood at 26th Street and Madison Avenue, the site now occupied by Cass Gilbert’s New York Life Insurance Company Building. There, on May 11, he conducted a 110-piece orchestra before 8,000 concertgoers. But that first concert included none of the songs, choruses, and arias that had made him famous, disappointing the audience. Nonetheless, the Sun’s critic described his conducting as “electric” and his music “delicious.” Future concerts featured what the public wanted at half the price, and Offenbach wrote the glittering “American Eagle Waltz” as an encore. Every concert was sold out.

He then conducted the American premiere of “La Vie Parisienne” on June 12, 1876, in Booth’s Theatre, at 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue. A tale of flirtation, masquerade, and romantic intrigue, told with viva cious music of irrepressible gaiety, full of irresponsible men-about-town, fashionable demimondaines, aristocratic visitors in search of a good time, and an assortment of flamboyant characters, the operetta, too, was sold out at all performances.

Offenbach closely observed New York life. Having made and lost several fortunes in producing his own shows, he was fascinated by the local impresarios. He sensed a producer believed himself entitled to at least four bankruptcies, observing “the more times he takes a dive, the higher he comes up next time.” When he asked where a hero of six or seven bankruptcies got the money for a new show, the answer was: from his creditors, who lent him more, hoping that one smash hit would recoup their losses.

His other observations seem oddly contemporary: He found advertising intrusive, public transportation overcrowded, and cab rides too expensive. Alas, the traditional free lunch counter in bars, which he admired, vanished with the horse-drawn streetcar. But one may still find that “there probably exist no more seductive women in the world than the Americans.”

After conducting a benefit concert for the musicians’ union, Offenbach sailed for France. Homesick, he had written to his family, “What a lovely town New York is, what lovely women, what lovely walks, what lovely mud when it rains, it’s all quite superb, but … Ah! My pretty Paris. …”

He died in 1880, worn out at 61. His music – the bubbling, effervescent overtures, waltzes, and cancans that have enchanted audiences for generations – still lives.