Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jacques Offenbach was born on the 20th of June 1819 in Cologne, which was then part of Prussia. He was born Jacob Offenbach, the seventh of ten children of Isaac Juda Offenbach Eberst, a synagogue cantor and itinerant musician.
Orphee aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld), which premiered in October 1858, was Offenbach's most played work. It ran for 228 performances at a time when 100 nights was considered a success, and Napoleon III commanded a performance in April 1860.
Offenbach auditioned for the conservatoire director Luigi Cherubini in November 1833 at the age of 14. After hearing him play, Cherubini said: "Enough, young man, you are now a pupil of this Conservatoire." Offenbach left of his own accord after one year, with the rolls recording his departure on the 2nd of December 1834.
When Prussia defeated France at Sedan in September 1870, Offenbach fell sharply out of favour in Paris. Despite his French citizenship and Legion d'honneur, his German birth made him suspect during a period of intense anti-German sentiment. La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein was banned in France. He rebuilt his career during the 1870s through continued success in London, Vienna, and New York, and through Parisian revivals of his earlier operettas.
No. Offenbach died on the 5th of October 1880 before finishing the orchestration. He left the vocal score substantially complete. His friend Ernest Guiraud, assisted by Offenbach's 18-year-old son Auguste, completed the orchestration and made cuts required by the Opera-Comique. The opera premiered on the 10th of February 1881.
Both W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan drew on Offenbach's satiric and musical styles, and borrowed plot components. The mock-oriental Ba-ta-clan is argued to have influenced The Mikado, and Les brigands (1869) shaped the treatment of the police in The Pirates of Penzance (1879). Gilbert had translated the libretto of Les brigands into English before The Pirates of Penzance was written.