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).

falls into two parts. The first section discusses the main elements of the touring repertoire. This consisted initially of popular melodramas such as The Manxman, Trilby and The Sign of the Cross. The Bandmann Opera Company, his most important company, provided facsimile versions of Edwardian musical comedies, most of which were drawn from the George Edwardes’ Gaiety Theatre, with whom Bandmann had an exclusive agreement. Another mainstay of his repertoire was variety theatre, which became increasingly important after 1914. Each genre was represented by its own company, each of which toured on an integrated rotation system. The second section discusses the heterogeneous publics on the Bandmann Circuit as a colonial public sphere. Bandmann’s publics included non-English-speaking audiences in Japan, parts of China and the Dutch East Indies, among other areas.

Some producers are more than presenters of a show, they are involved as artistic directors or as actor managers. George Edwardes combined the skills of artistic director and impresario. Robert Courtneidge, a contemporary of Edwardes, was another producer director in London, and he exercised additional skill as an actor manager. A stage director may appear in the programme as ‘stage manager’ or ‘stage producer’. American producer Jacob Shubert, always known as J.J., enjoyed stage directing and was sometimes named as sole director, as he was for Kálmán’s Her Soldier Boy (1916), and Countess Maritza (1926). Those responsible for the musical direction and conducting of English versions of continental European operetta in London and New York were often involved in more than coaching singers and conducting. They were expected to make arrangements of the music when necessary and were often asked to compose songs for interpolation into the operetta. The chapter also includes consideration of singers, dance directors and designers.

It was, above all, the romantic melodies and rich harmonic textures of operetta that attracted British and American audiences. The music of operetta occupied a number of positions between popular musical theatre and opera. Dance rhythms formed an important part of the style of every operetta composer. American influence on German operetta had its source in the music-making of African Americans in the period just before the jazz craze of the 1920s. There was delight in mixing musical styles, and it is common to find Austro-German, Hungarian, and American styles in the same piece. While operettas with modern themes were increasingly characterized by syncopated rhythms in the 1920s, those with exotic themes were spiced up with augmented intervals, modal harmony, and ostinato rhythms. Most operetta composers in Vienna and Berlin were happy to have the help of orchestrators. Orchestrators were also on hand for New York productions.