5. The modern scene.

Today operetta is scarcely to be found in the commercial theatre and, apart from a few works that have been accepted into the operatic repertory, it has become increasingly of interest to a specialist audience.

The revival of classic operettas raises difficult questions. For popular consumption, librettos are deemed to need modernizing to remove references unintelligible to a present-day audience, but for a more intellectual audience, those dated contemporary references constitute much of the essence of a work. Absorption of operetta into operatic repertories also raises other questions of style, since operetta performance requires a range of talents not to be found in the typical opera performer, including an ability to put across words in both song and dialogue and to scale down the grand-opera style of projection.

Fidelity to the original has been affected by other factors, notably the desire of opera singers for vocal challenge and greater vocal contrasts, which has influenced the public conception of the voices for which roles were conceived. By pushing up a voice trained in a lower register, a more brilliant effect can be achieved than would be the case with music written for a more restricted voice range. This has led to the taste for giving soubrette roles to a mezzo-soprano or tenor buffo roles to a baritone.

If striking a balance between authenticity and tradition thus poses particular problems, operetta nevertheless continues to enjoy its small specialist niche. In Germany, Austria and other central European countries, classic operettas continue to be staged professionally as lighter fare in the repertory of subsidized opera companies. The Volksoper in Vienna remains above all as the standard-bearer of the Viennese operetta tradition, with a repertory of operettas supplemented by the lighter operatic fare. Operetta productions at summer festivals in spa towns help to perpetuate the tradition. Likewise, in France, productions of classical French and foreign works enjoy weekend productions in major towns, as well as in the summer festival at the spa town of Lamalou-les-Bains.

That a substantially different situation has developed in English-speaking countries is due to two particular factors. The first is the overwhelming success of the Savoy operas, which have long eclipsed other works from before World War I. Works such as Monckton’s The Arcadians and The Quaker Girl at least enjoy occasional amateur productions, but Jones’s The Geisha, despite surviving into modern times in the operetta repertory in continental countries, has virtually disappeared from the British scene. The second factor is the growth of a strong native-language successor in the form of the American musical, which has largely superseded earlier traditions. The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, for so long able to tour continuously with an unrelieved diet of Gilbert and Sullivan, finally expired from a static repertory, declining audiences and increased costs.

Increasingly, then, the international survival of the major operettas has been achieved through their establishing a place in the repertory of opera companies – a tradition that dates back to the production of Die Fledermaus under Mahler at Hamburg in 1894. In Britain a rediscovery effort was made during the 1960s by Sadler’s Wells Opera, beyond which the most significant revival of classical operettas in London has been by student companies and by the privately financed John Lewis Music Society, whose operetta productions have covered Chabrier, Lecocq, Messager, Planquette, Suppé and Millöcker. In the USA, similarly, productions of Herbert, Lehár and Romberg at the New York City Opera have been more liberally supplemented by revivals of Sousa, Lecocq, Offenbach, Kálmán and Johann Strauss at festivals at Wooster, Ohio, and elsewhere.

Operetta