 Audiences at the Opéra-Comique were more straight-laced than those at the Bouffes-Parisiens, Variétés and other Parisian theatres where Offenbach's works were usually seen, and Offenbach, determined not to alienate them, chose a familiar subject, Robinson Crusoe.It was well known to Parisian audiences from stage adaptations, particularly one by René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt described by "Le Figaro" as "a happy amalgam of Shakespeare and Daniel de Foë" .In the version by Offenbach's librettists, Eugène Cormon and Hector Crémieux, the first act opened with a reassuringly bourgeois scene