Transcript Broadway Musical Comic Opera And Operetta Week 3

Broadway Musical
Comic Opera And Operetta
Week 6
段馨君 Iris Hsin-chun Tuan
Associate Professor
Department of Humanities and Social
Sciences
NCTU
• Minstrelsy, burlesque,
extravaganza, vaudeville,
and revue burst onto the
American theater without
forcing the contemporary
European forms out of the
entertainment market.
• A renaissance of European
influence on the American
musical theater.
• The popular French
comic opera known
as the opera bouffe.
• Gave the comic
operas a twenty-year
success the English
comic opera.
English comic opera
• The American premiere of
Gilbert and Sullivan’s
H.M.S. Pinafore at the
Boston Museum,
November 25, 1878,
created a sensation.
• By 1916, Vanity Fair
reported a “fever” in New
York.
HMS Pinafore — Season: Autumn 1991
HMS Pinafore - We Sail the Ocean Blue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCHy0XXHknw
• All Manhattan was comic
opera mad.
• Joining comic opera on the
scene was a similar, even
more influential from--operetta.
• Like comic opera, operetta
employs music, spoken
dialogue, light subject
matte, comedy elements,
and romance.
The picture about operetta.
• The difference is one
of emphasis and tone.
• Life imitates an allconsuming romantic
fantasy.
Emmerich Kalman operetta "Bajadera"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZUK6mNtFFM
operetta
Comic opera
• Where comic opera
exploits plausible
situations, farce, or verbal
wit, operetta abandons
everything to unfettered
imagination.
• The form originated and
developed in Germany and
the Austro-Hungarian
Empire during the final
quarter of the 19thC.
the Mad Comic Opera finale.
Victor Herbert
• Operettas like Victor
Herbert’s Babes in
Toyland constitute the
earliest major
achievement of
twentieth-century
American music for
the theater.
Victor Herbert
• Victor Herbert’s
operettas gave the
audience music, not
theater. In Mlle. Modest,
character, dialogue, plot,
and situation existed
only as accessories to
song.
• Herbert preferred
tuneful music; he loved
the lilt, the verve, and
the harmonies. BABES IN TOYLAND - 1934
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i7YGHCKPyg
• Herbert’s destiny was to
popularize the American
operetta, consolidate its
musical resources,
influence the craft and
instruction of musical
theater orchestration,
and reorganize the
American theater
orchestra for improved
sound performance.
William Norris as a "toy soldier", 1903
Sigmund Romberg
• When American
operetta reached the
peak of critical and
popular acclaim in the
1920s, the shows of
Sigmund Romberg
epitomized the form.
Sigmund Romberg. -He died on
Nov/09/1951, was born on Jul/29/1887
• “he understood the
stage”. Where Herbert
showcased marketable
songs, Romberg marketed
dramatic emotion
through song.
• Romberg’s concern for
the text enriched his
compositions.
Sigmund Romberg sheet music
• Sigmund Romberg so extended the musical
and dramatic possibilities of the operetta form
that little soon remained to be said, sung, or
explored.
• American audiences abandoned operetta in
the 1930s.
Deep In My Heart (1954) Trailer
Biopic of composer Sigmund Romberg with Adolph Deutsch in charge of
the music. Carole Richards dubbed Cyd Charisse's singing voice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2vxMDpnHLg&feature=related
Rudolf Friml
• The last of the “Big
Three” operetta
composers was a serious
musician.
• Renowned pianist, and
the composer of thirtythree operettas. A
spectacular talent for
musical improvisation.
1879 - (Charles) Rudolf Friml,
composer, concert pianist, born in
Prague.
• Friml’s musical
composition and
improvisations never
departed from the
tradition that was his
European musical
heritage.
• In the style of Viennese
operetta as “Indian Love
Call ” and “Only a Rose.”
Indian Love Call, Jeannette MacDonald, Nelson Eddie, Stewart
Jeannette MacDonald sings Indian Love Call to Nelson Eddie, with James Stewart, in
Rose-Marie (1936)
://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87bUBB-rwFc
• The model for operetta
devised by the “Big Three”
offered a wholesome story
accompanied by melodic
music, romantic settings,
sentimental situations, and
clean comedy--- all
wrapped attractively in a
sumptuous production.
"I Fratelli Mario" follows the basic
story line of the Super Mario
Brothers video game but with
some twists.
• Music was and is the greatest
factor in operetta.
• When the librettist serves
the musician, character, plot,
dialogue, lyrics, situation,
production concept, and
humor suffer.
• If you’ve never encountered
an operetta plot, you’ve
never encountered plot at all!
Decline
• The Depression, which began in the late 1920s,
brought rapid and enormous changes in
American life and with them the end of operetta.
• The American musical theater tradition had
embraced opera, ballad opera, pasticcio, puppet
shows, pantomime, minstrelsy, burlesque,
spectacular, extravaganza, revue, comic opera,
operetta, and an adolescent musical comedy.