#light opera

[kckatie]

Tonight’s earworm: Gilbert and Sullivan - Patience - If You’re Anxious For to Shine

KU put on a production 25 years ago with the jocks against the goths. Sadly, the jocks win

[opera-ghosts]

Lillian Russell's only known recording, from 1912

"Come Down Ma Evenin' Star" from John Stromberg's Twirly Whirly (1902), performed by Lillian Russell. During the production of Twirly Whirly, John Stromberg delayed giving Lillian Russell her solo for several days, saying it wasn't ready. When he committed suicide a few days before the first rehearsal, the sheet music for Come Down Ma Evenin' Star was found in his pocket. It became Lillian Russell's signature song, and is the only one she is known to have recorded.

Lillian Russel was one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, renowned for her beauty and style as well as her voice and acting. For many years, Russell was the foremost singer of operettas in America. Her voice, stage presence and beauty were the subject of a great deal of fanfare in the news media, and she was extremely popular with audiences. Actress Marie Dressler observed "I can still recall the rush of pure awe that marked her entrance on the stage. And then the thunderous applause that swept from orchestra to gallery, to the very roof.” When Alexander Graham Bell introduced long-distance telephone service on May 8, 1890, Russell's voice was the first carried over the line. From New York City, Russell sang the saber song from La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein to audiences in Boston and Washington, D.C.

[hang-on-lil-tomato]

[delcat177]

Fuck dudes, it's the Leap Year. What do we do?

Ignore it. It's a day.

Send The Pirates of Penzance to as many mutuals as possible

Feel the collective weight of people reacting to where they were last Leap Year

Whatever the opposite is of that (per experience)

I like to think most of us are having a slightly better time

Talk about it

I'm just here for the light opera are you all, like. okay?

The one with the wrist strap! (Results)

Voting ended onFeb 29, 2024

[weaversweek]

"Nel blu dipinto di blu (Volare)" - Domenico Mudugno

1958 Music: Domenico Mudugno; lyric: Domenico Mudugno and Franco Migliacci

The Eurovision Song Contest has produced many hits. None are as recognisable as this one. It's number 11 in Let's Do It, my personal fifty favourite singles from 1954-76.

Volare! (Fly!) Oh-oh! (Oh-oh!) Cantare! (Sing!) Oh-o-oh-oh! (Oh-o-oh-oh!)

Domenico Modugno co-wrote "Volare" after having a weird dream, and then he turned his song about that weird dream into this massive smash. It's a hulking great piece of ham, this cheese dream song, as subtle as being hit over the head with a brick.

A proper piece of light opera, Domenico performs "Volare" with great vocal capacity. And he remembers that it is just a silly little song, performed with a little chuckle in his voice.

In short, it's exactly what any contest of popular song should reward. No wonder that it won the San Remo festival in 1958, and swept to an overwhelming third place at that year's Eurovision festival.

Popular taste has always been a strange and inexplicable thing, "Volare" was later covered (in English translation) by Dean Martin; he has the vocal brilliance, but doesn't quite have the playfulness Domenico brings to the song.

It was the most successful of a squillion covers, ranging from the sublime (David Bowie on the Absolute Beginners soundtrack), to the flamenco (Gypsy Kings), to the unspeakable (Aled Jones and Russell Watson).

And if you can't sing well, there's always a call-and-response section. "Volare" is the one Eurovision song that a desperate producer can expect a crowd to know and love. Chantel Janzen led the crowd in a singalong when technical problems delayed a rehearsal in 2021; producers in Istanbul used "Volare" to fill a gap when an item proved unbroadcastable in the 2004 final. These days, they might use "Snap".

[roscoe-conkling]

Actor and comedian Otis Harlan, star of the 1900 Broadway production of the cowboy musical 'The Black Sheep', is pictured on a theater lobby card.

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

MY HOMETOWN OPERA COMPANY IS DOING THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: You’ve written about Wagner, do you enjoy light opera? (Though compared to Wagner, all opera is light opera...). But seriously do you enjoy The Merry Widow and such fare?

I think you are right next to Wagner any other opera might well be considered light opera. It’s like going from reading Thomas Mann, James Joyce or Marcel Proust to Alexandre Dumas, Jane Austen, and P.G. Wodehouse.

I do enjoy ‘light opera’ (or also known as operettas) but it’s been a while since I’ve attended a performance. I suspect it’s because the cost of going to operas is quite steep these days so you have to discriminate. Alongside how lucrative ticket availability is and the time free one actually has to attend then like many others, I tend to save my money, effort, and time, on going to the really big operas instead of the lighter variety.  You want more bang for your buck as they say.

I admit you sucker yourself into thinking you are going to a ‘major cultural event’ by going to a big heavyweight opera. But of course it’s not true at all.

I think part of the problem is the term light opera or operetta itself. It’s a problem of definition. How on earth does one describe it? It comes across as a bit of a derogatory term and not something to take seriously.

It’s very difficult to define the lines between musical theatre, operetta, and opera, especially when opera companies occasionally mount musical theatre or operetta productions. People have proposed a number of possible criteria: Perhaps in musicals and operettas, the words matter more than the music and vice versa in operas. This is somewhat true, but one can think of counterexamples - for instance, the primacy of the music - some of it stolen from operas–in several of Weber’s musicals. Perhaps it is the presence or absence of dialogue. But it begs the question does that make The Magic Flute, Ariadne auf Naxos, Carmen, and other examples of Singspiel and opera comique musicals? And does it make Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera operas?

There doesn’t seem to be a workable, clear criterion.

The best anyone can come up with is that an operetta is something that falls between opera and a musical. I’m not sure how helpful that really is but essentially it’s the least offensive definition I have come across. Like a musical, an operetta (most often) contains spoken dialogue, as well as song. Operettas are often satirical and witty, and tend to be much shorter and less complex than traditional operas. But the mistake would be to get sniffy about it and not treat it with a sensible level of seriousness because it has a great musical lineage and popular mileage to match.

Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus walks the line between opera and operetta. It is performed at the world’s leading opera houses (like the Met in NYC), which usually sniffily shun operettas. Interestingly when it was first performed in Vienna at the Theatre an der Wien in 1874, it was to an unmoved audience. It wouldn’t be for another two years that the Viennese audience took to the operetta, and another 16 years before the Vienna Opera added Die Fledermaus to its repertoire. But now it’s well known and beloved all over the world. I know from experience that it’s also a go-to piece for Gilbert and Sullivan societies looking to mix up their annual repertoire. It is frequently performed in English in English-speaking countries, but it is also frequently performed in the original German in English-speaking countries. It has gotten the Regie treatment - which operettas are usually spared–on several occasions, but when directors aren’t super-imposing dark political or psychological messages onto it, it’s about as silly and contentless as an opera/etta could possibly be. I love it.

Johann Strauss the younger of course modelled his operettas on Jacques Offenbach, the 19th Century French composer. Strauss’s satire was often generic, unlike Offenbach who commented on real-life matters. Also unlike Offenbach’s, and other operettas of the time, Die Fledermaus relies on the power of the orchestra, and only one role can be performed by an untrained voice.

I do enjoy the works of Jacques Offenbach. Which is just as well as he is credited with inventing the operetta art form and composing over 100 of them. His achievement of course paved the way for Strauss, Gilbert & Sullivan, and the musicals of the 20th century, which stemmed from the genre.

I have enjoyed watching and listening to his works such as  Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers), and Beautiful Helen (La belle Helene). Up until 1858, when Offenbach composed Orpheus, his theatrical licence prevented him from staging any operas with more than one act, or four characters. After negotiation (with Napoleon III’s government) he was finally allowed to stage full-length operettas, and Orpheus in the Underworld was premiered. To get back at the young Napoleon’s strict regime, Offenbach wrote an operetta that satirised Paris and its government. Surprisingly, the emperor allowed Offenbach to stage the operetta without any censoring.

Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár’s operetta Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), is one I do enjoy immensely. The melodies and songs - Vilja, The Merry Widow Waltz, You’ll Find Me At Maxim’s, to name but a few - are lovingly played and sung the whole world over, making it one of the surest box-office attractions of all time.

There is no question I think that the Austro-Hungarian Franz Lehár revitalised the world of Viennese operetta after the golden age of this genre with composers such as Suppé, Strauss and Millöcker was over. While Strauss, who transplanted the light waltz of the 19th-century bourgeoisie into Offenbach’s harshly satirical tradition, is regarded as the inventor of the Viennese operetta, Lehár’s The Merry Widow was an extraordinary and unexpected success in the Vienna of Freud, Mahler, Schnitzler and Schönberg. It was Lehar’s merit to have revived this genre to much critical acclaim.

Apparently, Hitler referred to the operetta as ‘the equal of the finest opera,’ and it is rumoured to be the only piece of music the dictator would play during the last two years of the war. Thankfully, Lehár and his operetta remain untarnished by their association with Hitler, largely because the composer kept a low profile during the war and died shortly afterwards. The Merry Widow is still popular worldwide. And rightly so.

One reason why I love it is within the story itself. Today, Hanna would be called a modern woman. At the time of the world premiere in 1905 such a role design caused a sensation. Valencienne, on the other hand, is the counterpart to her; she corresponds more to the traditional, conservative role model.

So I would put Die Fledermaus, Orphée aux Enfers, and Die Lustige Witwe in the tier one of operettas.

But it’s the next tier that I have a more personal attachment to and those would be the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan. And why not? They are such jolly good fun and an immensely enjoyable spectacle. 

I have known G&S aficionados get sniffy or bristle with annoyance about G&S works being described as operattas - including many of the older generations in my family. One of my great aunts practically snorts with disdain in her dram of Scotch whisky at the very suggestion. She just sees that as another sign of civilisational decay. I think Gilbert & Sullivan themselves thought of their works as comic operas more than anything else.

But they do share one major trait with Offenbach and that is they do satire in such biting ways. Indeed they often poke fun at the establishment and use wit and humour as a way of expressing political opinion. But what sets them apart from everyone, including Offenbach, is how unpretentious they are in the music and to tell it as a story with such gaeity and wit that puts on dry English humour at its best.

I would say The Mikado, Iolanthe, and The Pirates of Penzance would be three of my favourite G&S comic operas from the fourteen they did.

Before Gilbert, a lawyer by training, died in 1911 he asked that The Mikado, an operetta set in Japan (although in fact a commentary on British issues), be updated to reflect current issues. Indeed it’s one of the many highlights that I love the most about The Mikado is how inventive they are going to be when they come to do ‘It’s on the list’. As G&S afficianados know ‘The List’ is list of gripes on current personalities and current affairs that have nothing to do with the opera. It’s very funny.

One of my favourite parts of The Pirates of Penzance’s is the famous Major General’s song that parodies the military leader who, although well educated, knows basically nothing about warfare or technology.

Another favourite of mine is from The Mikado - the beloved Three Little Maids From School Are We.

Other operettas on my list would include, in no order:

Auber - Haydée ou Le Secret Bernstein - Candide Carl Zeller - Der Vogelhändler Chabrier - L'Étoile Franz von Suppé - Boccaccio Gilbert & Sullivan - H.M.S. Pinafore Johan Strauss II - Der Zigeunerbaron Karl Joseph Millöcker - Der Bettelstudent Karl Joseph Millöcker - Gasparone Lehár - Das Land des Lächelns Lehár - Zigeunerliebe Offenbach - La Vie Parisienne Offenbach - La Belle Hélène

Thanks for your question