Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T17:13:18.461Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Operetta in Italy

from Part III - Operetta since 1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2019

Anastasia Belina
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
Derek B. Scott
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
Get access

Summary

The history of operetta in Italy is inextricably entangled with discourses about the status of Italian opera and the formation of an Italian national identity. In the 1860s, it was Offenbach, Hervé and Lecocq that conquered the Italian stages, then, later, the ‘Viennese’ imports of Suppé, Strauss Jr and Lehár. Italian operettas based on parodies of foreign works and combining elements of dialect and couleur locale flourished at this time but struggled to undermine both the foreign monopoly and the time-honoured tradition of opera buffa. The relationship between operetta and Italian opera – not only buffa but also seria – was central also to critical discourses about the rise of the Italian bourgeois, becoming closely intertwined with questions on the position of musical theatre between entertainment and art. Inevitably, discussions of operetta also took strong nationalistic undertones in a country that was struggling to find a unifying national identity and that recognized operetta as a foreign import that could contaminate opera or illegitimately undermine its primacy on Italian stages. The extraordinary success of La vedova allegra in Milan in 1907 and the growing political tensions between Italy and Austria-Hungary in ensuing years sparked new interest in the creation of a national operetta.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Recommended Reading

Bortolotto, Mario. ‘Sul teatro d’operetta’. Nuova rivista musicale italiana, 3 (1971): 420–42.Google Scholar
Fiorentino, Waldimaro. L’operetta italiana. Storia, analisi critica, aneddoti. Bolzano: Catinaccio, 2006.Google Scholar
La Gioia, Diana. I libretti italiani d’operetta nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma. Florence: Olschki, 1979.Google Scholar
Niccolai, Michela. ‘“Oh fior di thé, t’amo credi a me!” Alcuni aspetti della ricezione del mito-Butterfly nella canzone e nell’operetta fino agli anni Trenta’. In Groos, Arthur and Bernardoni, Virgilio, eds., Madama Butterfly: l’orientalismo di fine secolo, l’approccio pucciniano, la ricezione. Florence: Leo Olschki, 2008, 375–91.Google Scholar
Niccolai, Michela. ‘Portraits de femmes exotiques dans le café-chantant et l’opérette italiens (1910–1940 environ)’. In Niccolai, Michela and Rowden, Clair, eds., Musical Theatre in Europe 1830–1945. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, 325–47.Google Scholar
Oppicelli, Ernesto. Operetta. Da Hervé al Musical Hall. Genoa: Sagep Editrice, 1985.Google Scholar
Piano, Roberto. Addio giovinezza: l’operetta a Torino. Turin: Beppe Grande editore, 2002.Google Scholar
Recupido, Giovanni. ‘Un signore senza pace di Dino Rulli (1925): un esempio della ricezione del jazz nell’operetta italiana degli anni venti’. In Niccolai, Michela and Rowden, Clair, eds., Musical Theatre in Europe 1830–1945. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, 311–24.Google Scholar
Sorba, Carlotta. ‘The Origins of the Entertainment Industry: The Operetta in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy’. Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 11, no. 3 (2006): 282302.Google Scholar
Traversetti, Bruno. L’operetta. Milan: Mondadori, 1985.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×