The 1911 satirical novel Operettenkönige begins with theft: an operetta melody is stolen. Sung in all earnestness by a young composer to his lover – an actress of questionable moral character for whom the omniscient narrator spares no scorn – it is stolen by an eavesdropping competitor who hides beneath the composer’s window. It started its life as a token of genuine affection, but as soon as it escapes into the Viennese air it becomes a valuable commodity, generic enough to be planted anywhere but specific enough to possess its own exchange value.1
Such is the paradox of operetta production: defined by its critics as formulaic and promiscuous but by its creators and audiences as possessed of a unique romanticism and the mark of genius. Viennese operetta, more than its French or English counterparts, was marked by a tension between the demands of high and popular art. Despite its genuinely commercial nature, composers and librettists frequently seized on the discourse of high art as a way to elevate their own critical prestige. This usually backfired, but the production process itself is marked by a pull between the individual creator and the ruthlessness of commerce.
This chapter offers a practical introduction to the production of operetta in twentieth-century Vienna. By the turn of the century, the city’s operetta world had developed into an industry with its own economy and division of labour. This is apparent from a host of sources ranging from newspaper and magazine stories to the memoirs and letters of librettists and composers. Though the documentation of the creation of any individual work can range from sparse to nonexistent, together these sources form a relatively consistent and complete picture of the composition and performance of an average operetta. In most respects the operetta industry operated in a regularized manner – there is even a cartoon depicting Lehár as the boss of an ‘operetta factory’. The wall appears to be a theatre box office, with each ticket labelled after a different Lehár operetta. The latest is Eva, which dates the caricature to around 1911–13.2 But the reception of operetta was more comprehensively preserved than its production process, for which sources of information remain scarce. Financial records in particular are lacking, and while general economic practices can be pieced together, it is usually not possible to track the box-office takings of any particular work.3
This chapter is intended to demystify a process often obscured by myth and scorn as well as to illuminate the many constituents involved in operetta production and some of their (often conflicting) interests. I begin by surveying the people involved in writing an operetta; then turn to the conventions of the silver-age operetta text itself; then the theatres, publication and economics of the operetta world and, finally, survey the reception and audiences who bore witness to the industry’s products.
Librettos and Librettists
Viennese cafés were the nerve centres of production. An undated engraving by Sigmund von Skiwirczynski depicts no fewer than twenty-four operetta luminaries positioned around a few tables in the Café Museum, labelled ‘The Fixed Stars of Viennese Operetta, Surrounded by Their Satellites’.4 During the silver age, the fixed stars of librettos included Victor Léon, Leo Stein, Alfred Grünwald, Julius Brammer, Robert Bodanzky, Alfred Maria Willner, Fritz Löhner-Beda and Heinz Reichert. Many operetta librettos were written in such cafés, where ideas and information were traded and collaborations made and broken. Librettists were typical café-goers: bourgeois, educated and almost all Jewish.5 When embarking upon an operetta, most librettists worked in pairs, one taking primary responsibility for the plot structure and spoken dialogue (Prosa) and the other writing the verse song texts, and both critiquing each other every step of the way – a process that ensured a degree of quality control but also homogenization. Dialogue librettists often began their careers as playwrights, and song-text librettists as poets or songwriters, but the division was not absolute. Some librettos were the production of a single author (most often Victor Léon, the most influential, prolific and experimental of all Viennese operetta librettists), and some are credited to three or more.
Relatively few operetta librettos were original subjects though as plots became more formulaic over the course of the twentieth century newly invented librettos became more common. The most popular source was, by far, middlebrow theatre, particularly French boulevard theatre such as that of Meilhac and Sardou. This genre was in fact the equivalent of operetta in spoken theatre: it was targeted at a similar audience and sometimes even played in the same theatres.6 These plays’ tidy plots, conventional character types and decisive endings (usually finishing with marriage) became the template for many operettas. Librettists also based operettas on short stories or novels or fitted historical figures or events into an operetta format.
Sometimes the source was credited, but often, in the interest of preserving more of the royalties for the new librettists, it was not; librettists hoped their sources would be obscure enough not to be noticed. Such ghosting was well known enough to be frequently joked about in theatrical circles. Shadow sources ranged from yet more French plays to a novel by a ‘Spanish writer who has been dead for more than thirty years’.7 Were the librettists to be caught stealing, they could be met with legal action by the original authors or their estate. The ‘foreign basic idea’8 that was credited with the plot of Die lustige Witwe was recognized immediately by critics as Meilhac’s familiar play L’attaché d’ambassade, though Meilhac’s estate sued the librettists only after the operetta became a massive hit and there were prodigious sums to be had.
Composers
Operetta resists the auteur framework, but composers, nonetheless, are usually identified as the single most important figure in an operetta’s composition and production. (Librettos were usually written first and then marketed to a composer.) Most nineteenth-century operetta composers had little formal compositional training, their backgrounds usually being in groups such as salon orchestras and military bands. In the silver age, however, most composers came to operetta after conservatory study as art music composers and thus possessed larger compositional toolboxes. After completing their training, almost all of their biographies continue in fits and starts and odd musical jobs that typify most early careers in composition. Many operetta composers also tried their hand at writing opera, with varied results. Along the way, they discovered a knack for writing in a popular style and turned to it full time.
The first operetta composer to have a background in art music composition was Richard Heuberger, best known to scholars as second-stringer to Eduard Hanslick at the Neue Freie Presse and as the director of the Singakademie and Wiener Männergesang-Verein.9 After training as an engineer, Heuberger studied composition with Robert Fuchs in Graz. Of his many operettas, his only major success was Der Opernball in 1898, one of the most important works of the transitional period between the golden and silver ages. Unlike Heuberger, Franz Lehár and Leo Fall were both military bandmasters in the Austro-Hungarian armed forces as well as orchestral composers; Fall, Oscar Straus and Emmerich Kálmán all came to operetta after first experimenting with cabaret songs (Straus and Fall in Berlin, Kálmán in Budapest). But all had studied at conservatories and written some ‘serious’ music before delving into operetta.
It should be noted that the post-conservatory experiences that led these composers to operetta – conducting in provincial theatres, orchestrating light music, working in military bands and playing for cabarets – were hardly unique, and in fact identical to the background of many of the era’s composers of art music. Mahler conducted numerous operettas in his early career, as did Webern.10 Alexander Zemlinsky worked as an orchestrator and also served as Kapellmeister at the Carl-Theater for two seasons; Zemlinsky’s orchestration of Heuberger’s Der Opernball amounted in some places to co-authorship, as Karl Kraus even noted publicly.11 (Although Kraus implied that Heuberger required assistance due to a lack of technical skill, the evidence suggests that poor time management was an equal if not greater factor.)12 Even Arnold Schoenberg worked for the Über-Brettl cabaret in Berlin and orchestrated operetta (inspiring his Brettl-Lieder).13
Whereas both Schoenberg and Mahler seem to have looked back at their periods in light music with fondness, other composers saw it as a period of indentured servitude before their true talents were recognized. Webern, for example, associated operetta with toil in the provinces, referring to operetta as ‘Dreck’ (muck).14 While it should not be surprising that assistant conductors and orchestrators were not allowed space to demonstrate their creativity or that working conditions in provincial theatres were often bad, these poor experiences are vital background for the same composers’ later condemnations of operetta.
Orchestration
As noted above, many operetta composers did not orchestrate their own work, though Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán and Leo Fall, three of the most notable composers of the silver age, did. Some abstained due to, as Kraus implied, a lack of musical education, others due to lack of interest (operetta orchestration was often routine) or lack of time (as in the case of Der Opernball). Kálmán, Lehár and Fall all managed to do so and were abetted in their later careers by the luxury of time. Additionally, their fame was grounded in their handicraft and original voices – in which their command of the orchestra played an important role.
The issue of orchestration was a sensitive one for operetta insiders, a delicate topic in the operetta industry’s collective quest to be taken seriously as artists. In July 1926, an article in Die Stunde asked, ‘Who orchestrates Viennese operettas?’ The anonymous writer reports that a prominent unnamed Viennese music critic would, at the next assembly of the Association of Playwrights and Composers, demand that the names of anonymous orchestrators be listed in theatre programmes.15 This was motivated, the article detailed, less by a desire to give credit to the unnamed than to expose the many prominent operetta composers who were not capable of orchestrating their own music ‘because they cannot master the art of instrumentation’ (‘weil sie die Kunst der Instrumentations nicht beherrschen’) and to laud the real masters who could – Lehár, Kálmán and Fall, described as the ‘matadors of Viennese operetta’. The article goes so far as to name Vienna’s most popular orchestrators: conductor Oskar Stalla, Nico Dostal (later a successful composer himself) and ‘der Musiker Kopsiva’.16 No specific clients are named, though Stalla is described as having contracts with four prominent composers for the next season. It is unclear if the promised confrontation ever came to pass.
Templates
The basic recipe for a silver-age operetta was largely established by the success of Die lustige Witwe in 1905, as were the smaller-scale genre conventions. Some of these conventions existed well before Witwe, the most important earlier watershed moment being Johann Strauss Jr’s Der Zigeunerbaron (1885). However, in the twentieth century their deployment became more predictable.
A silver-age operetta generally centred on two couples. The ‘first couple’, played by the leading man (a low tenor or high baritone) and leading woman (soprano) are usually somewhat older and experienced in life and given music that was relatively demanding in vocal terms. The younger couple, a soubrette and a lighter ‘bon vivant’ or buffo tenor, are usually younger characters with less demanding singing parts, given more comic business and are often asked to do a great deal of dancing. (Die lustige Witwe is exceptional in this regard.) While the singers of these roles were often younger as well, some performers spent their entire careers in second-couple roles. The supporting roles generally include several Komiker, purely comic characters both male and female, some singing and some only speaking. There were even specific divisions of Komiker and Komikerin, such as the komischer Alter or komische Alte, the funny elderly person (such as Njegus in Die lustige Witwe and Mariza’s and servant Tschekko in Gräfin Mariza).17
Plot structure was also honed to perfection. Operettas were organized into three acts, opening with an overture or prelude followed by an introductory scene in a public setting in which a supporting character introduces the situation. The leading man and woman both sing entrance songs, and the secondary couple receives some material as well. The first act closes with a large finale, usually on an upbeat note with an acknowledgement of love between each couple. The second act opens with a large dance number including local colour, replicating Die lustige Witwe’s Vilja-Lied, and subsequently features ornate twists and turns in the plot.
In the tradition of the ‘well-made play’, these plot confusions often involve props or ‘devices’ such as letters, keys, miniature portraits, fans or lockets. There are usually one or two duets for the leading couple, and the act ends with the silver age’s most grandiose achievement: the infamous Act 2 finale. This is the operetta’s most ambitious musical structure and contains a melodramatic twist to end the act on a note of tragedy and pathos.18 Third acts often read as afterthoughts, vestigial structures that quickly tie up the plot. Their existence was frequently credited to a theatre’s imperative to sell refreshments during a second intermission, though eliminating the second intermission would also threaten the second-act finale.19 To maintain some interest, a new character known as the ‘dritter Akt Komiker’ is occasionally introduced, who tells topical jokes that have little or nothing to do with the rest of the plot, a throwback to the jailer Frosch in Die Fledermaus. A few lively musical numbers, often including dance, and a quick resolution of the plot finish up the operetta. There is no major Act 3 finale, merely a brisk reprise of an earlier number as a ‘Schlussgesang’ (closing song). See, for example, Kálmán’s Die Csárdásfürstin (1915) or Franz Lehár’s Eva (1911).20
These constructions were entirely self-conscious, and audiences and critics were as aware of them as composers and librettists. Operetta critics often attacked the dependence on ‘Schablone’ (stencils), but it seemed that this predictability was what audiences wanted. The authors’ skill was demonstrated in the use and development of these conventions. Were the waltz themes memorable? Was the instrumentation refined? How exciting was the twist in the second-act finale? Audiences expected certain thrills out of the operetta, and the authors were judged based on their ability to deliver the known features in a novel or satisfying way. Dramatic and musical patterns and habits that were for critics a mark of inartistic, mass production were, to operetta fans, beloved conventions of the genre.
Theatres and Productions
The Viennese theatres where operettas were produced were licensed private commercial enterprises, designated ‘k.u.k. [imperial] Privattheater’. Vienna had a seemingly insatiable appetite for performances, and, until the economic crises of the 1920s and the spread of sound film, more and more theatres were built. Theatres rarely closed down entirely, but they frequently changed artistic direction.21 While names often remained the same, programming constantly changed with fashions, ownership and artistic direction. For example, the Raimundtheater opened as a German nationalist Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn enterprise in 1893, became a spoken-word theatre in 1896, a home for visiting operetta troupes in 1900 and, finally, in 1908, was taken over by the management of the Theater an der Wien.
The closer a theatre was to the city centre, the wealthier an audience it could attract, the more media coverage it would receive in major newspapers and the higher ticket prices it could command. For operetta, the most prestigious stages were the Carl-Theater (whose name was not standardized and often appears as Carltheater) and Theater an der Wien, located in the Vorstadt but not far from the glittering centre. The Johann-Strauss-Theater, situated very near the Theater an der Wien, joined this elite rank when it opened in 1908. Further afield in the suburbs were the Theater in der Josefstadt, the Lustspieltheater and the Neue Wiener Bühne, playing similar, sometimes more mixed programmes with somewhat lower prices – and lower production values.22
The seating capacity of theatres varied; the Theater an der Wien was the largest at 1,859 spectators (reduced from its nineteenth-century capacity due to a renovation that replaced the roof and eliminated the top level), while the Carl-Theater and Johann-Strauss-Theater both accommodated around 1,200. The orchestra rosters of the three most important theatres hovered around forty-two members in 1910, while the less prestigious theatres averaged around thirty-five; however, it seems unlikely that all the members were playing on any given night. By the lean year of 1929, the Theater an der Wien’s roster had dropped to eighteen musicians and the chorus to a mere ten.23 Theatres also kept complete musical personnel on payroll including conductors, assistant conductors (often aspiring or semi-successful composers), accompanists and copyists.
Theatres maintained their own workshops for the construction of sets, costumes and props (with the occasional dramatic backdrop outsourced to one of the city’s scenic painters) and kept large stocks of items which were recycled for less prestigious premieres. Whether a work received the investment of new sets and costumes or not was taken as an indication of faith from the management in the work’s chances for survival.24 Operettas were even featured in fashion spreads in the ladies’ section of newspapers, where women could take cues on the latest styles from what glamorous stars like Betty Fischer or Louise Kartousch wore onstage.25
Economics and Publication
At some point in the composition process of a new operetta, the composer and librettists signed a contract with a theatre. In a typical contract, the royalties were divided evenly between composer and librettists, with the composer receiving half the authors’ portion and the two librettists splitting the other half. Contracts often included provisions for profits from sheet-music sales and later contracts included recordings, the rights for performances outside Vienna and film adaptations. Wilhelm Karczag and the Theater an der Wien in particular strove to create a vertically integrated operetta industry. Karczag (and his successor, Hubert Marischka) ran his own publishing house, Karczag-Verlag, which printed the scores of many (though not all) of the operettas his theatre premiered. The firm also received a cut from recordings. Sometimes Marischka even negotiated a share of the proceeds for himself.26
Although this enabled the theatre to reap a healthy profit from successful works, it eventually developed into a risky model. In the 1920s, when expectations for visual opulence rose, the theatre made extremely high investments in new productions. The upfront costs could not be recouped by ticket sales in Vienna alone and required revenue from other cities, sheet music and recordings. The catch was that only a work that gained the reputation of Viennese success would bring in this additional cash. A work that flopped or was only a moderate success in Vienna could result in catastrophic losses. Ultimately, this proved ruinous.
Publication was an important step for lasting success in operetta. Successful composers had standing contracts with publishers and published all of their work; new composers sometimes waited until they achieved fame. When an operetta was published, it became available to the general public in a variety of forms, including piano-vocal scores, piano solo arrangements with the text printed above the music but without a separate vocal line (Klavierauszug zu zwei Händen mit unterlegtem Text) and piano four hands with text. As well as the complete operetta, publishers also issued editions of excerpts, such as individual hit songs and short medleys of the most popular numbers. Potpourri arrangements for salon orchestra were also an important means of dissemination beyond the theatre.
After an operetta’s premiere, the final version of the text was printed as a Regie- und Soufflierbuch (direction and prompt book) or Vollständiges Soufflierbuch mit sämtlichen Regiebemerkungen (full prompt book with complete production notes). These librettos were not offered for sale to the public, as their copyright stated explicitly, but were rather available only on loan or rental to other theatres producing the works. (The public could purchase a shorter libretto containing only the song texts.) This controlled the operetta’s circulation, so the publisher could better collect royalties.27 The text contains detailed notes on the original production’s design and staging, which theoretically were to be replicated by provincial theatres to the greatest extent possible. Choreographies were sometimes published separately. The original staging was considered an integral part of the work, akin to the words or music, and the director responsible for the staging is noted prominently on the cover. But it is clear that for foreign stages directors adapted works for local taste and resources and that this versatility was important to its international appeal. For example, Stefan Frey surveys the international success of Die lustige Witwe, including the implications of changing casts, localized humour and eventual sound recordings and film.28 Printed librettos and staging manuals should not be considered definitive records of any production.29
Censorship
Strict censorship was legally mandated for all licensed Viennese theatres until 1919. An operetta’s spoken dialogue was first prepared in a typescript that was submitted to the police censor in duplicate for approval around a month before the premiere. The censor read the libretto, underlined any objectionable sections in red pencil on both copies and wrote a short summary and report on all the problems. One copy was returned to the theatre, the other was – thankfully for future scholarship – retained in the police’s archive. The libretto was then approved for performance on the condition that the librettists adopt the censor’s alterations. The law explicitly included visuals, music and gestures as well as spoken text.
Typically for the empire, the primary goal of the censor was to maintain public order and the appearance of harmony. The office had been established by an order issued during the Metternich era, on 25 Novembe 1850. Theatres were prohibited from ‘That which, in historical context, violates the need for public peace and order, that which insults public decency, shame, morality, or religion’.30 The censor forbade several specific categories of activity: directing the actors to perform any illegal action; displaying a lack of loyalty or respect for the state or the imperial house; disparaging patriotism, mocking or displaying hatred of any nationality, religion or social class; insulting public decency, godliness or morality; any display of real Catholic vestments or imperial uniforms; and libel against any living people.31 While this may seem sweeping, few scripts show many signs of the red pencil. Librettists were familiar with what was allowed and what was not and rarely seem to have pushed the envelope. This did not mean, however, that the censor’s rules did not play a large role in the subjects chosen.
The office of the police censor was eliminated following the empire’s dissolution. In an interview with the theatre magazine Komödie, mayor of Vienna Jakob Reumann described the censor as ‘the remnant of the old police state’, now outdated, and said that he believed that ‘the good taste of the public’ would serve as sufficient regulation for stage production.32 Whether there was actual freedom of expression, however, was questionable: an article in Die Stunde from 1926 entitled ‘The censor is dead! Long live the censor!’ pointed out that while the formal censorship process had ceased, the police still wielded the power to shut down any production deemed out of order and that any statement against the state or offence against public decency would prompt immediate action. (The anonymous author gives no specific examples.33) But operettas depicting real monarchs became common – such as Im weißen Rössl, Madame Pompadour and Kaiserin Josephine – ironically, nostalgic reminders of an era when they would have been disallowed onstage.
Critics and Criticism
Reviews were published in newspapers the day following premieres and were found in the theatre and arts section. Many of the critics responsible for these reviews were enmeshed in operetta society: several wrote librettos themselves and others penned biographies of composers, and conflicts of interest were common.34 While some reviews were anonymous, in most papers, critics were identified by their pseudonym (usually a few consonants from their surname).
Vienna had a notoriously large number of newspapers during this period.35 The most prolific coverage of operetta could be found in the Neues Wiener Journal, considered the most gossipy and female-targeted of the major broadsheets. A paper’s theatre coverage occasionally betrayed the publication’s overall political orientation, though most critics did not often espouse a prominent political agenda beyond bland centrist Liberalism. The more ideologically extreme papers are more easily labelled, such as the German nationalist Reichspost and the socialist Arbeiter-Zeitung (whose critic David Josef Bach is one of the most consistently interesting).
The most influential critics of the first decade-and-a-half of the twentieth century were Ludwig Karpath of the Neue Wiener Tagblatt and Leopold Jacobson of the Neues Wiener Journal, whose names and opinions were frequently cited by composers and librettists. In the 1920s, Julius Bistron and Ernst Decsey become more prominent. Table 12.1 lists the major critics of operetta from 1900 to 1930.
Table 12.1 Major Viennese operetta newspaper critics
| Newspaper | Pen Name | Name | Years Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neue Freie Presse | — | (reviews unsigned) | 1900s–1910s |
| L. Hfd | Ludwig Hirschfeld | 1920s–1930s | |
| Neues Wiener Journal | bs. | Leopold Jacobson | 1900–c.1910 |
| a.e. | Alexander Engel | c.1908–1920s | |
| -ron | Julius Bistron | 1920s | |
| Neues Wiener Tagblatt | -rp | Ludwig Karpath | 1901–c.1920? |
| E.D. | Ernst Decsey | 1920–1930s | |
| Dr. E.D. | |||
| Fremden-Blatt | st. | Julius Stern | c.1900–1919 |
| Österreichische Volks-Zeitung | A.L. | Alexander Landsberg | 1900s–1910s |
| St. | Julius Stern | 1919–1920s | |
| Deutsches Volksblatt | Sch-r. | Karl Schreiber | until 1922 |
| Arbeiter-Zeitung | D.B. | David Josef Bach | 1900s–1910s |
| Reichspost | (none) | Otto Howorka | 1910s–1930s |
Most reviews follow the same format. Operettas are first judged by their ability to fulfil the basic goals to amuse and divert (critics often mention whether the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves). Other basic requirements include the libretto’s pacing and plot twists, the composer’s ability to write a waltz, very often the quality of the orchestration (ironic since many operetta composers did not do this themselves) and the charisma, singing and dancing abilities of the actors. In longer reviews, critics endeavour to place the operetta in the context of its creators’ previous works. Composers receive the most attention. They are assumed to have particular strengths, weaknesses and identities, their mastery of the Viennese idiom is usually remarked upon and, if the composer in question was not native Viennese (as the majority of the major silver-age composers were not), his attempts to convince in what was considered a quintessentially Viennese language are assessed for their success.
Critical and public opinion often converged. Some works, however, were critical successes but popular flops; the opposite (critical flops and popular successes) was not common until the growth of the much-maligned revue operetta in the 1920s. For those critical of operetta as a whole – writers from more literary or serious musical circles who were generally not reviewing it on a daily basis – this collusion of criticism and market was one sign that marked operetta as non-art. Ultimately, it was the popular vote that determined how long an operetta would remain on the schedule.
Audiences
It is difficult to determine exactly the precise demographics of operetta audiences, but some details can be gleaned from contemporary accounts. While theatres did offer subscription tickets, the fixed box society of major opera houses did not exist in operetta theatres, nor did the quasi-patron power of those box holders. Some hints as to demographics can be picked up from the magazine Komödie, subtitled ‘Wochenrevue für Bühne und Film’. In 1921, Komödie published a list of readers who had won a contest. Eighty-four readers in all are listed as winners, with their names and addresses supplied. Out of this number, the largest number, 57 per cent, lived in the suburban Vorstadt, between the Ringstrasse and the Gürtel; 37 per cent lived outside the Gürtel and the remaining 6 per cent lived inside the Ringstrasse in the Innere Stadt. This reinforces the oft-stated assumption that the most devoted operetta audience was the middle class and lower middle class.36
Due to the city’s demographic changes in the late nineteenth century, the distribution of operetta audiences changed as well. In 1902, on the threshold of the silver age, Max Graf recorded a transformation of operetta taste over the past few decades, powered primarily by the streetcar.37 While nineteenth-century Vienna had been a patchwork of neighbourhoods, public transportation now tied the city together, and its population was more likely to claim an identity as Viennese or as an immigrant rather than allegiance to their home district. In Graf’s view, this had a chilling effect on operetta. While the audience had greatly expanded from a small circle of connoisseurs to a mass form, quality had decreased. What once was individual and specific – ‘the wit of Offenbach, the grace of Johann Strauss, the melodic cleverness of Millöcker’ – had, according to Graf, become mass-produced and generic, lowered to the folk music of a Viennese Heuriger.
Many operetta artists maintained that it was those in the gallery who made or killed an operetta, not the voices of the critics or even those who purchased the more expensive seats. Proportionately, this seems possible, since there were many more cheap seats than there were expensive ones. The silver age’s tendency towards Serienerfolgen – hit operettas that ran for years at a single theatre – certainly encouraged writing for large audiences. Serienerfolgen also required a theatre to draw a largely new group of audience members every single night, akin to a modern Broadway megamusical.38
Conclusion
As in the field of opera research, the multimedia nature of operetta can make its study a confusing experience. Due to operetta’s popularity and liminal role in the Germanic musical establishment, these sources are plentiful but are frequently scattered between departments in major libraries, often split between music and theatre collections. Several important archival collections, notably papers of librettist Alfred Grünwald and the photographic collection of librettist Victor Léon, are located in the United States (at the New York Public Library’s Billy Rose Theatre Collection and Harvard University’s Houghton Library, respectively). Sometimes these texts tell conflicting stories, surviving from various stages in the artistic process or concerning an ephemeral performance whose exact character will always remain a mystery. But the very plenitude of this written record and its occasional contradictions can provide a dynamic, lively view of a largely forgotten art form, one which is only beginning to be mined by scholars.
