Operetta Geek, Part 1

I think I must have some kind of strange, musical genetic mutation. Some
of the letters in my genome must have grace notes and fermatas. I really,
really love operetta. What’s to love? Richard Traubner answers this question
in his book,

Operetta: A Theatrical History.  Operetta, he writes, “attracted
its audiences principally by means of its contagious melodies [and] clever
libretti, satirical jibes, romantic intrigue, mesmerizing stars, lovely
chorus girls, and scenic splendor” (p. viii). Plus those yummy, rousing,
virile male choruses—ya gotta love ’em—like “Stouthearted Men” from Romberg's

New Moon. It was the songs, Traubner adds, that “were always
the most important element in the popular genre” (Ibid.). The melodies
and lyrics stick in your head. You walk around all day singing them.

As I see (or hear) it, operetta lies (floats) on a continuum with, say,
Giacomo Puccini (
La Boheme) on one end and Jonathan Larson (
Rent,which is based on
La Boheme\) on the other. Parisian and Viennese by by birth, when
operetta came to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, it was what
audiences wanted on stages until the Great Depression and in 1930s movies
like those starring Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald, no doubt because,
like the Fred and Ginger musicals, they’re so wonderfully escapist. Operetta
is a close neighbor to musical comedy—which is said to be more realistic—and
existed alongside shows by George M. Cohan, George and Ira Gershwin, and
Rodgers and Hart. Some experts say operetta was done in, first by Kern
and Hammerstein’s
Show Boat (1927) and Irving Berlin’s many shows, then by Rodgers
and Hammerstein (
Oklahoma,
Carousel,
The Sound of Music, etc.) composed between 1943 and 1959. In a brief
interview on a DVD of
The Desert Song, Nelson Eddy says that operettas are fairy tales
for adults.

Who are some of operetta’s greatest composers? More or less chronologically
from the mid-19th century to the third decade of the 20th century: Jacques
Offenbach, Johann Strauss II, Oscar Straus, Gilbert and Sullivan, Victor
Herbert, Rudolf Friml, Franz Lehar, Sigmund Romberg, Jerome Kern, and Noel
Coward, plus maybe Frederick Lowe. (And would you believe that John Phillip
Sousa also wrote a dozen operettas? I don’t know if any of them feature
the military marches he’s more famous for.)

Johann Strauss II, better known as the Waltz King (he also wrote polkas
and marches) and the composer of the “Blue Danube Waltz." Surely you remember
how it was used in

2001: A Space Odyssey.
Strauss alsowrote many operettas, including
Die Fledermaus, which some people call light opera. The BBC did a
TV miniseries about the
Strauss family in 1972. One thing we learn is that when the Strauss
Orchestra played concerts in ballrooms in late 19th–century Vienna, the
audience didn’t sit in the dark like we do today. They got up and danced!
There’s also an operetta based on Strauss's life and music. The Great Waltz
was produced on Broadway in 1934 and like the famous biopics of the 40s
and 50s had no connection to reality.

Oscar Straus’
The Chocolate Soldier is based on G.B. Shaw’s comedy
Arms and the Man. Though Shaw at first forbade the librettist from
using any of his dialogue or even the characters’ names, he finally gave
in. It’s a nice bit of anti-war satire whose “hero” is a Swiss mercenary
who carries chocolates in his ammunition pouch instead of bullets. It’s
also romantically gooey, and here’s the gooiest song in the show, “
My Hero.”




If you want clever libretti and romantic intrigue, you can’t miss with
Lerner and Lowe’s romantic, old-fashioned shows:
Brigadoon (1947),
Paint Your Wagon(1951),
My Fair Lady (1956),
Camelot (1960), and
Gigi(originally a movie in 1958 and adapted for Broadway in 1973).
One characteristic of operetta is that the setting is often a romantic,
usually make-believe (usually Balkan) land. Lerner and Lowe give us a mythical
Scottish town and the mythical Old West. I think
Camelot also qualifies. Here’s the original
Arthur, Richard Burton, singing about the magical land. 




I invite you to come back next month for Part 2 of operetta geekery