The chapter begins with a survey of musical comedy of the 1890s and early twentieth century. A brief account of Edward German and his operettas follows. Noël Coward established himself as a British operetta composer with Bitter Sweet in 1929. However, the person who did most to keep English operetta alive in the 1930s was the Welsh composer Ivor Novello (1893–1951). He gained a considerable amount of experience both as a composer for the stage and as an actor before completing his first operetta, Glamorous Night, in 1935. This chapter assesses Novello’s achievements, musical and dramatic, and investigates the critical reception of his operettas. It places him in the context of what came before (Fraser-Simson, Montague Phillips, Noël Coward) and what came after (Vivian Ellis, Julian Slade, Sandy Wilson).

National Socialism is said to have ended the success story of operetta art: the death of the genre may be situated between 1933 and 1945, caused by Nazi purges. This chapter takes a closer look at operetta during the Nazi regime, dealing with three different approaches. First, I sketch the consequences for operetta of the Nazi ideology of denial (Verweigerungsideologie). Operetta stood against every Nazi theory of ‘German art’ for two main reasons: its dazzling aesthetics and artists, mostly defamed for being Jewish. Second, the chapter focusses on the aim to conceive an original type of German operetta. The examples of Heinrich Strecker’s chauvinistic Ännchen of Tharau (1933) and Hermann Hermecke’s and Arno Vetterling’s propaganda operetta The Dorothee (1936) reveal that attempts to reinvent the genre were dominated less by instructions from potentates than by artists who wanted to support the regime. Third, the chapter examines theatre practice, exemplified by Munich’s Gärtnerplatz Theatre between 1938–44. Even in these years, theatres had to deal with an audience that still demanded the roaring, non-German genre tradition. Operetta offers a glimpse into quotidian culture under the dictatorship, where the ‘death’ of the genre was not as widespread as stated.

When Franz Lehár’s Viennese operetta The Merry Widow arrived London in 1907, it was not only one of the most remarkable West End hits but also the beginning of a new age of global entertainment. The reception took place worldwide and overcame national traditions to establish a new international show business in the early twentieth century. In consequence a cross-cultural exchange emerged confirming the ‘birth of the modern world’ at that time. Along with Lehár, a new generation of composers propagated the new style on the Continent, for example, Oscar Straus, Leo Fall and Emmerich Kálmán. In the decade before World War I, Viennese operettas dominated the repertory of the Western world. Balancing the ‘local’ and ‘global’ was an important aspect of their achievement, so it was no coincidence that all those composers originated from the Habsburg Empire. Thus, Lehár grew up as a son of a Czech-born, German-speaking military bandmaster and of a Hungarian mother, spending his childhood in seven different cities of Austria-Hungary. Life was similar for Leo Fall, who furthermore was Jewish like Oscar Straus, and Emmerich Kálmán. But they all worked in Vienna, the experimental laboratory for the arts generally and popular music especially.

Scholars writing about Gilbert and Sullivan prefer ‘Savoy Operas’ to ‘operettas’, taking their lead from history and often hoping to place these shows on a par with more highly regarded comic operas. Whatever one calls them, they provide plenty of interest for musicologists working on operetta, and the status anxiety surrounding them is especially revealing. An opening section on their history shows that concerns over respectability lay behind every aspect of the way the shows were created and marketed, and formed the background to changing perceptions of the two creators. New critical attention is given here to the continued entanglement of ethical and aesthetic concerns in scholarly writing on composer and librettist. The second section addresses distinctive features of the content, in particular Gilbert’s legal influences and stagecraft, and Sullivan’s musical deadpanning. Anxiety appears again over the quotations and references in both the music and text, but this can be understood as a fundamental part of the audience experience, closely tied to the creation of class identity. Finally, a discussion of modern Gilbert and Sullivan performances and enthusiast communities serves as a springboard for considering issues of politics in staging and performance and points the way to possible left-wing interpretations.

This chapter provides an overview of the development of Hungary’s operetta scene and analyses the contrasts between shows written for a Hungarian audience and those created with an international public in mind. In Budapest, operetta shared the Hungarian lyric stage with the népszínmű (‘folk plays’ with music), a genre descended from the Austrian Volksstück, usually featuring more rural plots and simpler music. As time went on, operetta increasingly displaced népszínmű but continued to support shows with local plots. The latter did not serve composers well if they wished to expand their horizons beyond Hungary. I discuss Kálmán’s use of contrasting character types, such as the sophisticated European and exotic Hungarian and Gipsy, and contrast his approach with that of other Hungarian composers who wrote shows that were popular in Hungary but did not travel well. An example of a Hungarian work that draws on the operetta and népszínmű traditions is Zoltán Kodály’s Háry János. Generally labelled as a singspiel ‘symbolizing the poetic power of folklore’, using ‘genuine’ Hungarian folksong materials, it was, in fact, written and performed for the opera house rather than the commercial theatre. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Hungarian operetta since World War II.

What is zarzuela? What is its relation to operetta? If the first question can only be addressed in general terms, the second requires a more complex answer. The development of Spanish-language music theatre has been shaped over four centuries by dialogue with opera on one side and operetta on the other. The influence of external operetta movements on zarzuela ranges from Parisian opéra comique and Offenbach’s opéra bouffe, through the English musical plays of Jones and Monckton to the Viennese ‘silver age’. All these nourished the Spanish genre while (as Nietzsche recognized) extending the concept of operetta. After examining classic género chico works such as Federico Chueca’s La Gran Vía and Ruperto Chapí’s La revoltosa, Christopher Webber highlights the period between 1910 and the early 1920s. In those years lavish opereta español was the fashion in Madrid, notably Pablo Luna’s key work El asombro de Damasco, written with London tastes in mind. A brief coda surveys developments after the Spanish Civil War, notably Pablo Sorozábal’s Black, el payaso. This daring 1942 satire on Francoist rule, masquerading as a homage to Emmerich Kálmán, was one the last works to yoke the societal concerns of romantic zarzuela with operetta.

Light musical theatre first appeared in Greece during the second half of the nineteenth century in the form of French operetta and vaudeville, bringing new morals that scandalized the nouveau-bourgeois society of Athens and divided the public into ‘Europeanists’ and ‘conservatives’. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Viennese operetta introduced light musical theatre, which thrilled Athenian audiences and represented the ‘imperial dream’ of the inhabitants of a small country on the fringes of Europe. Operetta inspired the creation of Greek musical theatre companies from the early twentieth century and became popular for tours of the south-eastern Mediterranean. This phase ended with the production of plays and performances of Greek operetta during the interwar period. This chapter offers a multi-sided approach to the expansion of operetta in Greek-speaking areas, which brought with it a renovation of the Modern Greek theatrical stage and life, invigorating it with a new repertoire and forming a new theatrical tradition. New operettas provided the frame for Greece’s twofold musical identity: Western and Oriental. Operetta served as a social melting pot between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ musical creation and was the source of many well-known songs

The chapter narrates the history of operetta in Berlin. Compared to Paris, London and Vienna, Berlin was a latecomer when it came to popular musical theatre. The first operettas performed here were successes from other cities. However, in the last year of the nineteenth century, Berlin saw the beginning of a homegrown operetta industry with the success of Paul Lincke’s Frau Luna. As elsewhere, operetta was intimately connected with its locale, performed in the Berlin accent, reflecting on life in the city and inventing and popularizing local characters. This was just as true for the new generation of composers. Yet, their success abroad increasingly turned operetta into an international commodity. Berlin operettas were played in Paris, London, New York and many other cities around the globe until World War I put a stop to such cosmopolitanism. After the war, Berlin replaced Vienna as the operetta capital. The chapter ends with the rise of National Socialism, which spelt exile and death for the Jewish composers, directors and actors, without whom Berlin operetta would not have been possible. By reconstructing this story, the chapter rediscovers what once was a thriving and genuinely popular culture.

After touching on his own experiences, Barrie Kosky points out that operetta lost the continuity of its tradition in World War II. He calls for a radical investigation into operetta performance practice. He describes operetta as a Jewish art form not only because most of the composers, librettists and performers were Jewish but also because operetta itself is about assimilation, irony and disconnectedness. This tradition was interrupted because many Jewish artists went into exile or died in the war. After the war, everything subversive, erotic, ironic and contemporary became harmless, nostalgic, and arianized. But over the last ten years, new understanding has grown, and a new young audience is discovering operetta. Kosky maintains an operetta needs a fabulous score and must work on different levels as a combination of ‘serious but ironic’. Operetta needs characters, scenes and situations that can reveal performers’ virtuosity in mixing singing, dancing, speaking and acting. Kosky sees subversiveness and campy queerness as inherent in operetta. It appears in Offenbach’s political awareness as well as in the new definition of gender in the Weimar operetta. Kosky says new operetta requires composers and librettists familiar with the tradition but who should avoid copying operetta of the past.