The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. In the 29-volume second edition. Grove Music Online /General Editor – Stanley Sadie. Oxford University Press. 2000.

Operetta

(It.: diminutive of ‘opera’; Fr. opérette; Ger. Operette; Sp. opereta).

A light opera with spoken dialogue, songs and dances. Emphasizing music rich in melody and based on 19th-century operatic styles, the form flourished during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. During the 20th century it evolved into and was largely superseded by the Musical comedy. The term ‘operetta’ was originally applied in a more general way to describe works that were short, or otherwise less ambitious, derivatives of opera.

1. Nature and development.

2. France.

3. Central Europe.

4. Britain and the USA.

5. The modern scene.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANDREW LAMB

Operetta

1. Nature and development.

As a specific artistic form, what we now regard as operetta evolved in Paris in the 1850s as an antidote to the increasingly serious and ambitious pretensions of the opéra comique and vaudeville. It was to fill this gap that various attempts were made to establish a home for short, lighthearted operatic-style works. The particular success of Jacques Offenbach and his company at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, offering programmes of two or three satirical one-act sketches, was such that it led to the extension of the format into works of a whole evening’s duration and to the establishment of opéra bouffe as a separately identifiable form of full-length entertainment.

The success of Offenbach’s works was not confined to France, and their popularity in other countries led to the development of various national styles. It was with the evolution of the Operette in Vienna during the 1870s that the term first became applied to full-length works. When English-language works were produced, the terms customarily used were ‘comic opera’ or ‘comedy opera’; it is only in retrospect that the term ‘operetta’ has come to be applied to all national schools.

In Austria the importation of Johann Strauss into the theatre from the ballroom provided Viennese operetta with a composer to rival Offenbach. Strauss also provided the characteristic Austrian style – romantic rather than satirical and with a strong dependence on dance rhythms, especially the waltz. Meanwhile a counterpart had emerged in Spain with the revival of the Zarzuela, §3, at first owing much to that country’s Italian operatic traditions but later developing an essentially Spanish national style. The English-language counterpart, most notably the ‘comic operas’ of Gilbert and Sullivan, owed much to the British theatrical traditions of ballad opera and burlesque and even something to the Victorian choral tradition.

As a popular form of entertainment, the operetta reflected contemporary taste in the nature of its plots and moral attitudes as well as in topical references. As the predominant form of popular musical theatre of its time, it attracted composers, librettists, performers, managers, directors and designers. The importance of its dialogue made it even more dependent than opera upon a strong libretto. Some of its major successes involved recognized comic playwrights such as Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy in France and W.S. Gilbert in Britain. Many of the most successful and enduring of 19th-century Viennese operettas also had librettos adapted from French originals, which again were often by Meilhac and Halévy. Specialist performers developed who could combine singing with acting (and perhaps dancing) ability. Although composers such as Bizet, Chabrier and Delibes tried their hand at operetta in its early years, the most successful were generally specialists in such lighter forms.

By the 1880s and 90s the expansion of the form from its one-act origins had brought it to a point where it occupied much the same position as the opéra comique of 40 or 50 years earlier. With the passing of many of the major practitioners of operetta and the periodic quest for change that typifies the popular musical theatre, elements of the contemporary variety theatre were increasingly incorporated in the 1890s, a trend that evolved particularly in London under the designation ‘musical comedy’ or ‘musical play’. Where previously the logical development of the story had been of particular importance, displays of female glamour, fashionable dress and elaborately staged routines assumed greater importance.

At least until World War I the operetta, along with the early musical comedies, retained much of its traditional grounding in 19th-century light operatic styles. Indeed it enjoyed a powerful renaissance as a new school of more sensuous Viennese operettas, exemplified by Franz Lehár’s Die lustige Witwe (1905), gave the genre its most glittering international success. Lehár himself continued to maintain high standards of musicianship, rooted in a European classical musical training, so that he could aspire to write for the opera house while Puccini (in La rondine) aimed to write operetta in the manner of Lehár.

Yet after World War I, and increasingly during the 1920s, the works of André Messager, Reynaldo Hahn and Lehár that conspicuously sought to maintain classical operetta standards were becoming the exceptions in a popular theatrical scene increasingly dominated by song-and-dance musical comedy based on American vaudeville and dance-band song styles, seeking relief from the escapist, Ruritanian operetta world of dukes and princesses. To all intents and purposes the era of the classical operetta ended before World War II, though in Europe the term has continued to be attached to works that evoke European traditions.

There remains no clearly defined and universally agreed dividing line between operetta and the musical, and different lines of demarcation are drawn depending upon nationality, individual taste and prejudice. Such works as South Pacific, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof and Sweeney Todd have been seen as a modern continuation of operetta (Bordman, 1981). However, for all the undoubted operetta characteristics to be found in them, they are more precisely musicals, and their structures, production techniques and audience appeal are significantly different from those of the classical operetta.

Operetta