BK, if you are interested in more Offenbach, I recommend these two of his best, both with libretti by the wonderful Meilhac and Halevy, who wrote the libretto for Carmen.
La Belle Helene, Offenbach's deconstruction of Helen of Troy, has several recordings, but the ones with high-powered classical singers like Jessye Norman should be avoided. I like this Accord recording, which I had originally on LP, with Jane Rhodes very much.
La Vie Parisienne was written for a Parisian vaudeville troupe and it's about the closest Offenbach ever got to writing a musical comedy about a wealthy Parisian playboy pretending to be a tour guide and claiming his apartment is an annex of the Grand Hotel as he attempts to seduce a Swedish countess while the count is [planning on an assignation with Metella, a notorious courtesan and former lover of the playboy who wants him back. To round up guests for his annex, the playboy enlists a pretty glove maker, a boot maker, and his aunt's servants, who all pretend to be aristocrats staying at the "hotel". It's quite funny.
There's only one complete recording on EMI and I wish it were better: the sound's very reverberant and the cast could be funnier. Around 1965, the Jean-Louis Barrault-Madeleine Renaud Company added La Vie Parisienne to their repertoire of plays, and there are both a recording and DVD of a French television broadcast of that production. Only the wonderful Suzy Delair as Metella can sing, but the actors are wonderful.
