Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld” is a parody of opera’s founding myth; a satire of 19th-century Parisian society (particularly its marriages); and a journey to music’s most famous cancan.

In the myth of Orpheus, the demigod’s bride, Eurydice, dies of a snakebite; he goes to Hades to persuade the god of the underworld, through the power of his music, to return her. Pluto instructs that ...