Nadar · Public domain

The son of a Cologne synagogue cantor, he built the operetta into a genre almost single-handedly, writing nearly 100 of them after growing frustrated waiting for Paris's opera houses to stage his comic pieces and leasing a small theatre of his own in 1855. Orphee aux enfers, with its now-famous can-can, made him internationally famous; his final work, the opera The Tales of Hoffmann, left unfinished at his death in 1880, remains part of the standard repertory.