OPERETTA
If Operetta should become really popular, there should be something in it for everyone's taste. ... The people in the gallery must get something they can easily remember and take home. They have no money to buy the piano score, let alone a piano. — Johann Strauss II.
Operetta, or light opera, developed in the nineteenth century, offering lighter fare and including more spoken dialog than tradition opera. It attempted to appeal to a wider, more general public than that who attended the older form of singing theatre. In particular, operetta emphasized romantic themes and ended happily.
The genre originated in France as an outgrowth of opéra comique. While that has arias and recitative interspersed with spoken dialogue, despite its name it can be very serious, even tragic. (Bizet's original Carmen which used spoken dialogue rather than recitative, epitomizes opéra comique). The first to be successful in writing such works was Jacques Offenbach (La Grande-Duchess de Gérolstein). His opéras bouffes soon travelled to other countries each of which developed its own national school.
In Austria, the Operette was modeled on and often adapted from the French prototypes, especially the works of Offenbach, substituting the waltz and polka for the can-can and other French dances and moving the settings to Central Europe. (It was also called Waltz-Opera.) As a matter of fact, it was Offenbach who at a chance meeting in a Vienna café, suggested Strauss start writing operetta. Perhaps the most definitve is Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II with a libretto based on a French play by the librettists for Carmen. Strauss was followed by Franz Lehár (Die lustige Witwe - The Merry Widow), Oscar Straus and Emmerich Kálmán (Gráfin Mariza - Countess Maritza). Viennese operetta turned from the farces of the French type and concentrated more on romance.
While the opera presented for the court was rarely performed several nights in a row or for more than just a few performances, light opera frrequently ran night after night for months and even years. The prices were much lower than those for opera, and the theatres in Vienna were outside the city walls and more accessible to the general public. The arias were tuneful and audiences could take them home in their heads just as Strauss wished. The most famous of the theatres presenting them is the Theater on der Wien at which most Viennese operettas, including Countess Maritza and Die Fledermaus, had their prèmiers there. It was the largest and most lavishly equipped at that time. It could hold 2,200 people, larger than the Vienna Staatsoper (State Opera House) today. The main curtain could be raised and lowered with pulleys. Until then stagehands had to jump from the loft, acting as counter-weights, to lift the curtain. It was built by Schikaneder, the librettist for Mozart's Die Fledermaus. On the roof he erected a larger-than-life statue of himself as Papageno. He commissioned the opera Fidelio from Beethoven and helped underwrite the expense of producing it there. The theatre is still in use.
In Spain light opera took the form of the zarzuela. In Britain, the giants of the genre were Gilbert and Sullivan who called their works 'comic operas'. All of those mentioned above were immensely successful in America where operetta was essentially European. The few composers, such as the Irish Victor Herbert and Hungarian Sigmund Romberg, wrote operettas while living here but were not native Americans.
A few traditional operettas, in particular Die Fledermaus, Die lustige Witwe and La Grande-Duchess de Gérolstein, are occasional presented by large opera companies such as the Metropolitan. For smaller companies, such as Lyric Opera San Diego, which make a specialty of lighter fare, operetta plays a significant part of the répertoire, but successful new works in that form are rare. It was really a nineteenth century genre which lasted into the beginning of the twentieth century. After World War I, with a few exceptions such as Countess Maritza (1924), the character of light opera changed. The appearance of Jerome Kern's Show Boat marked the beginning of a new form, and the start of a new era in singing theatre. This will be dealt with in a future article.
Revised September
2006
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