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.

Viennese operetta, while partly modelled on Offenbach, was also shaped by the city’s role as the centre of a multicultural empire and by its vibrant earlier tradition of popular musical theatre. The Volkstheater heritage included an emphasis on Viennese identity and character types, the depiction of ethnic and class differences and ironic sociopolitical critiques. These blended easily with the French operetta tradition. Plots of Viennese operettas often emphasized the mixture of many types of people: rich and poor, masters and servants, country and city folk and, of course, the various ethnicities of Austria-Hungary, such as Czechs, Hungarians, Gipsies and Jews. Social dances were featured in both plot and music, with the typical Viennese waltz playing the key role of showing that no matter what foreign exotic characters crossed the stage, Austrian identity was the true centre of the universe and romantic love. Dramatic finales and simple couplets with improvised stanzas were additional musical staples. Sentimentality was central to Viennese operetta, but a good dose of realism lay behind it. Even though various peoples were represented as stereotypes, operetta brought out the empire’s diversity and presented the idealistic possibility that mutual understanding could help it endure.

It was exciting, no doubt, to watch silent films to the accompaniment of musical excerpts played by cinema orchestras, but the 1930s gave audiences the chance to see stars sing and act. That decade consequently offers valuable historical insight into vocal practice and performance technique. This chapter begins with an overview of freshly created screen operettas and of films adapting stage operettas. It briefly examines Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1930) and other German films, before moving to British and American films. The demands of film are contrasted with techniques required in the theatre. The chapter then looks at the practice of adaptation in Hollywood, and it ends with a discussion of the operetta Heimat film in Germany.

Studies of opera during the Czech national revival of the 1860s and 1870s have understandably focused on the signal works of the burgeoning repertoire by the likes of Smetana, Dvořák and Fibich. But the stage of the Prague Provisional Theatre, the first establishment to perform plays and opera exclusively in Czech, was home to a much more omnivorous spread of works in which operetta played a highly significant role. With the arrival of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld in 1863, operetta rapidly grew to become a major part of the repertoire. Indeed, by the early 1870s performances of works by Offenbach outstripped those of any other composer. This chapter looks at the development of operetta in the Provisional Theatre, the polyglot nature of the repertoire, including its heavy emphasis on dance and a range other spectacles, and Czech composers’ somewhat ambivalent relationship with the genre; while comic opera certainly flourished among the Czechs, no native tradition of operetta managed to become established in these pioneering years.

This chapter offers a brief overview of the history of operetta in Russia, starting with performances and reception of German and French operettas from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and exploring home-grown, Soviet operetta. It will show that operetta was big business in tsarist Russia, and later in the Soviet Union, and demonstrate that it was a valuable resource, a laughter therapy, for the Soviet authorities with which to anaesthetize the masses to the realities of life. The works by German and French composers dominated Russian operetta stages, with the most popular composers being Suppé, Offenbach, Planquette, Hervé and Lecocq, until Soviet composers began to create operettas according to the new, official socialist realism style. This chapter will briefly introduce significant operetta composers – Dunayevsky, Strelnikov, Aleksandrov and Milyutin – and discuss contributions to the genre from such well-known composers as Shostakovich and Kabalevsky. It also gives a brief account of how operetta was instrumental to boosting the morale of the population ravaged by World War II, especially in blockaded Leningrad, and shows that operetta (both European and Soviet) is still popular in today’s Russia.

During the long nineteenth century, the Nordic countries witnessed economic growth, the industrial revolution and the prominent expansion of the bourgeois classes. The growing need for entertainment explains the popularity and increase in production of operettas from the 1850s onwards. Jacques Offenbach and his satirical operettas enjoyed success in Copenhagen at the Folketeatret. During the great Lehár craze, Danish performers toured Scandinavian cities. By the 1870s, Christiania (now Oslo) in Norway also had an operetta epidemic, and new venues opened for the active Danish and Swedish companies and some domestic initiatives. The first production of Offenbach’s Orfeus i underjorden in Stockholm was staged by Pierre Deland in 1860. An elegant new venue, the Oscarsteatern (built in 1906) had its first major success with Lehár’s Den glada änkan in 1907. A Swedish Theatre was erected in Helsinki 1860 and opened with Deland’s production of Orfeus i underjorden. Helsinki also accommodated Russian officers and their families, who found entertainment first in the Arkadia-theatre, where several Russian-language operetta productions were given. Operettas in Finnish found their best home at the Kansan Näyttämö (People’s Stage) founded in 1907 in Helsinki.

This introduction serves as an overview of the development of operetta and points to the neglect of operetta by many scholars of music and theatre. The editors begin by defining this genre, which is multi-faceted and often difficult to categorize. The introduction sets the stage for the following chapters by guiding the reader towards the important landmarks in the historical developments of operetta, such as those that occurred in France, Austria and London, and, in the twentieth century, in Berlin. In doing so, it also comments on notable composers and works. It concludes with some reflections on operetta reception in the twenty-first century.

Operettas and their creation have long been considered a system of standardized production. This chapter examines the ‘operetta industry’ as it developed in Vienna around 1900 with a focus on theatrical production practice and the ways it shaped the genre’s artistic development. Sources include librettos, periodicals, archival sources and Operettenkönige, a backstage operetta novel of unknown authorship, published in 1911. Vienna’s operetta circle was a self-contained, vertically integrated system which controlled all aspects of operetta composition and production, from the mentorship of young composers to press reception and the publication and export of successful works. Critics saw this regulation as an impediment to artistic innovation, but to insiders the high level of control was necessary to set genre conventions. For them, innovation belonged in the small-scale, self-conscious manipulation of these norms. While lucrative and popular, the industry did not often easily respond to large-scale change, and eventually became so highly leveraged that a single unsuccessful season could put a major theatre out of business. As operetta declined in favour of the revue and film, the industry disintegrated.

This chapter will show that although Warsaw is not a city readily associated with the global success of operetta, it was the place where operetta performances were not only popular but lucrative, and that they rivalled Vienna and Berlin with the quality of their productions and star-studded casts. Before World War I, operetta had no competition in Warsaw: it had publicity, stars, excellent productions, stunning stage sets and the latest lighting and stage equipment. Polish musicians, actors and directors had direct links with European theatres, and Warsaw was close to such operetta centres as Vienna, Berlin and Budapest. Warsaw operetta divas were celebrities adored by the public and critics alike. Some of them died leaving astronomical fortunes and lasting memories and recordings, some died tragically, and some died in complete oblivion. The chapter will look at the most significant operetta theatre not only in Warsaw but arguably in the whole of Poland, Teatr Nowosci, and some of the people who made it one of the city’s biggest attractions: Ludwik Sliwinski, Wiktoria Kawecka, Kazimira Niewiarowska, Jósef Redo and Lycina Messal.