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Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs and including dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, and length of the work.
There are some common characteristics among operettas that flourished from the mid-1850s through the early 1900s, beginning with the French opéra-bouffe.Gänzl, Kurt. "Toperettas: the history of operetta in ten works", Bachtrack.com, 22 October 2019 They contain spoken dialogue interspersed between musical numbers, and often the principal characters, as well as the chorus, are called upon to dance, although the music is largely derived from 19th-century operatic styles, with an emphasis on singable melodies. Operetta in the twentieth century is more complex and reached its pinnacle in Austria and Germany.
Operetta is a precursor of the modern musical theatre or the "musical".Jones, J. Bush (2003) Our Musicals, Ourselves, pp. 10–11, 2003, Brandeis University Press: Lebanon, New Hampshire In the early decades of the 20th century, operetta continued to exist alongside the newer musicals, with each influencing the other. The distinctive traits of operetta are found in the musical theatre works of Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim.
Jacques Offenbach is most responsible for the development and popularization of operetta—also called opéras bouffes or opérettes—giving it its enormous vogue during the Second Empire and afterwards. In 1849, Offenbach obtained permission to open the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, a theatre company that offered programs of two or three satirical one-act sketches. The company was so successful that it led to the elongation of these sketches into an evening's duration. However, Offenbach's productions were bound by the police prefecture in Paris, which specified the type of performance that would be allowed: "pantomimes with at most five performers, one-act comic musical dialogues for two to three actors, and dance routines with no more than five dancers; choruses were strictly forbidden." These rules defined what came to be defined as operetta: "a small unpretentious operatic work that had no tragic implications and was designed to entertain the public". Two other French composers, Robert Planquette and Charles Lecocq, followed Offenbach's model and wrote the operettas Les Cloches de Corneville ( The Bells of Normandy) and La Fille de Madame Angot ( The Daughter of Madame Angot). The two operettas were considered a major hit. The political limitations placed on Offenbach and Parisian theatre were gradually lifted, and operetta gained wide popularity. While Offenbach's earliest one-act pieces included Les deux aveugles, Le violoneux and Ba-ta-clan (all 1855) did well, his first full-length operetta, Orphée aux enfers (1858), was by far the most successful. It became the first repertory operetta and was staged hundreds of times across Europe and beyond. Offenbach's legacy is seen in operettas throughout the late 19th century and beyond by encouraging Strauss the Younger to bring the genre to Austria-Hungary. Offenbach also traveled to the US and England educating musicians on the more than 100 operettas he wrote during his lifetime. This international travel resulted in the appearance of strong national schools in both nations.
By the 1870s, however, Offenbach's popularity declined. The public showed more interest in romantic operettas that showed the "grace and refinement" of the late Romantic period. This included Messager's operetta Véronique and Louis Ganne's Les saltimbanques. The 20th century found French operetta even more out of favor as the international public turned to Anglo-American and Viennese operettas, which continued to develop the art form into the late Romantic era.
Strauss's satire was often generic, unlike Offenbach who commented on real-life matters.
Strauss's operettas, waltzes, polkas, and marches often have a strongly Vienna style, and his popularity causes many to think of him as the national composer of Austria. The Theater an der Wien never failed to draw huge crowds when his stage works were first performed. After many of the numbers the audience would call noisily for encores.
Franz von Suppé, also known as Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo, Cavaliere Suppé-Demelli, was born in 1819 and his fame rivals that of Offenbach. Suppé was a leading composer and conductor in Vienna and most known for his operetta Leichte Kavallerie (1866), Fatinitza (1876), and Boccaccio (1879). Suppé was a contemporary to Strauss and composed over 30 operettas 180 farces, ballets and other stage works. Recently, though most of his works have been fallen into obscurity, many of them have been reprised within films, cartoons, advertisements and so on. Both Strauss and Suppé are considered to be the most notable composers of the Golden Age of Viennese operetta.
Following the death of Johann Strauss and his contemporary, Franz von Suppé, Franz Lehár was the heir apparent. Lehar is widely considered the leading operetta composer of the 20th century and his most successful operetta, Die lustige Witwe ( The Merry Widow), is one of the classic operettas still in repertory. Lehár assisted in leading operetta into the Silver Age of Viennese Operetta. During this time, Viennese Censorship laws were changed in 1919.
The Viennese tradition was carried on by Oscar Straus, Carl Zeller, Karl Millöcker, Leo Fall, Richard Heuberger, Edmund Eysler, Ralph Benatzky, Robert Stolz, Leo Ascher, Emmerich Kálmán, Nico Dostal, Fred Raymond, Igo Hofstetter, Paul Abraham and Ivo Tijardović in the 20th century.
Paul Lincke pioneered the Berlin operetta in 1899 with Frau Luna, which includes " Berliner Luft" ("Berlin Air"), " Berliner Luft" conducted by Plácido Domingo with the Berlin Philharmonic which became the unofficial anthem of Berlin. His Lysistrata (1902) includes the song and tune "The Glow-Worm", which remains quite popular internationally. Much later, in the 1920s and 1930s, Kurt Weill took a more extreme form of the Berlin operetta style and used it in his operas, operettas, and musicals. It is arguable that some of Kurt Weill's compositions could be considered modernist operetta.Daly, Nicholas (2017-12-14). "2. Modernism, operetta, and Ruritania: Ivor Novello's Glamorous Night". In Ortolano, Scott (ed.). Popular Modernism and Its Legacies: From Pop Literature to Video Games. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. .
The Berlin-style operetta coexisted with more bourgeois, charming, home-loving, and nationalistic German operettas – some of which were called Volksoperetten (folk operettas). A prime example is Leon Jessel's extremely popular 1917 Schwarzwaldmädel ( Black Forest Girl).Lamb, Andrew. 150 Years of Popular Musical Theatre. Yale University Press, 2001. p. 203. These bucolic, nostalgic, home-loving operettas were officially preferred over Berlin-style operettas after 1933, when the Nazis came to power and instituted the Reichsmusikkammer (State Music Institute), which deprecated and banned "decadent" music like jazz and similar "foreign" musical forms. In the beginning of twenty-first century, German revival of operetta was an unforeseen theatrical development.Garde, Ulrike; Severn, John R. (2020-10-30). "2. 1930s jazz operetta and internationalisation then and now Risks, ethics, aesthetics". Theatre and Internationalization: Perspectives from Australia, Germany, and Beyond. Routledge. .
Notable German operetta composers include Paul Lincke, Eduard Künneke, Walter Kollo, Jean Gilbert, Leon Jessel, Rudolf Dellinger, Walter Goetze and Ludwig Schmidseder.
English operetta continued into the 1890s, with works by composers such as Edward German, Ivan Caryll and Sidney Jones. These quickly evolved into the lighter song-and-dance pieces known as Edwardian musical comedy. Beginning in 1907, with The Merry Widow, many of the Viennese operettas were adapted very successfully for the English stage. To explain this phenomenon, Derek Scott writes,
In January 1908, London’s Daily Mail claimed that The Merry Widow had been performed 450 times in Vienna, 400 times in Berlin, 350 times in St Petersburg, 300 times in Copenhagen, and was currently playing every evening in Europe in nine languages. In the USA, five companies were presenting it, and "the rush for tickets at the New Amsterdam Theatre" was likened to "the feverish crowding round the doors of a threatened bank". Stan Czech, in his Lehár biography, claims that by 1910 it had been performed "around 18,000 times in ten languages on 154 American, 142 German, and 135 British stages".The international embrace of operetta directly correlated with the development of both the West End in London and Broadway in New York. American audiences were first introduced to operetta through Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore in 1878 . American operetta composers included Victor Herbert, whose works at the beginning of the 20th century were influenced by both Viennese operetta and Gilbert and Sullivan.Ledbetter, Steven. "Victor Herbert", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, accessed February 11, 2009 He was followed by Sigmund Romberg and Rudolph Friml. Nevertheless, American operetta largely gave way, by the end of World War I, to Musical theatre, such as the Princess Theatre musicals, and revues, followed by the musicals of Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and others. Another notable operetta in English is Candide by Leonard Bernstein. It was advertised as a “comic operetta.” Candide’s score in some ways was typical for its announced genre with some waltzes, but Bernstein added the schottische, gavotte, and other dances, and also entered the opera house with the aria “Glitter and Be Gay”
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