In the late nineteenth century, the musical directors of the European opera houses have tried to accommodate various genres on stage. Some, such as ballet, have found their place in the repertoire, while others, such as operetta, needed a much longer time to wait or even a separate building to be erected. What were the reasons for the difficulties, with which the “light” musical genres accessed the audience of the respectable “palaces of culture,” the opera houses? What broader conclusions can be drawn about the dominant cultural and social values, the audience, the theatrical troupe and the composer? How important were the building and stage designs, the topic, the troupe’s capacity to play music, recite text and accommodate to the particular audience?
These and other questions were crucial at the conference “Musical Theatre as High Culture? Discourse on Opera and Operetta during the Late 19th Century,” organised by Vjera Katalinić, a cooperation partner of the international research project “Die Oper im Wandel der Gesellschaft - Die Musikkultur europäischer Metropolen im ‘langen’ 19. Jahrhundert” (financed by the Volkswagen Foundation in Germany, for more information on the project see http://www.operundgeschichte.de), in co-operation with the Croatian Musicological Society and supported by the Ministry of Science, Education and Technology of Croatia, took place on November 24-25, 2006 in Zagreb.
Stanislav Tuksar, professor of musicology at the Croatian Academy of Sciences started the conference with an inaugural speech about the normative division of musical productions into “high” and “low” music. This division was the topic of his speech “Aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare poëtae... Art of Music: High Ideals or Entertainment - A False Dilemma?” Quoting a great number of texts from the Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism and various modern “isms,” the speaker proved that the juxtaposition of serious and entertaining music was in fact false and cannot be grounded on an analysis of musical scores or the reception of music. Tuksar pointed out that this division was broadly used only since the 19th century and can be understood as an effect of values, with which bourgeois society inflicted culture. Moreover, while the nineteenth century is remembered for the invention of the “high”-“low” dichotomy and for a subsequent emergence of opera houses, dedicated to elevated music and the operetta theatre, supposedly meant to entertain only, the contemporaries often refused to consider this division as a serious one. Prof. Tuksar ended his speech with a call, referred later on several occasions during the conference, for a “new Messiah” who would reconcile the two genres in the best traditions of pre-Modernity.
The next two presenters analysed the specifics of discourses in, respectively, Ireland and Great Brittain. Harry White spoke of “Operas of the Irish Mind. Cultural Theory, Literary Reception and the Question of "Irishness" in Nineteenth-Century Opera.” He demonstrated that, despite the fact that in the “long nineteenth century” well over two hundred operas were written by Irishmen, and some were even inspired by Irish folklore, Irish opera made little or no impact in the history of music as a separate entity, being treated rather an off-shoot of the English developments. Lynda Payne addressed the topic of operettas inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s one of the darkest novels, “The Bridge of Lammermoor” (1819). Her paper “From Lucy Ashton’s Song to Lucia di Lammermoor's Lament: Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Perfect gothic novel’ and the Composers” was an attempt to bridge musical and medical history. Analysing the plot of the original Scott’s text, itself inspired by a true incident that took place in the Scottish lowlands in the seventeenth century, and the operetta librettos written in the 1830s, she proved that the similarities pointed to a specific cultural reference that a today’s viewer might miss, the so-called “green sickness,” or “disease of virgins,” the most common diagnosis for young unmarried girls in Europe since the Middle Ages.
Gesa zur Nieden presented “Reception models of "popular" and "high" musical theatre in the Parisian Théâtre du Châtelet (1862-1914),” which provoked a lively discussion. The concept of Théâtre du Châtelet, built by Haussmann under Napoleon III, was that of a popular theatre suited for the “grand spectacle,” meaning a theatre of a large scale and striking stage designs. The paper analysed the intended, the real and the symbolic interaction between the stage and the public. Architecturally, the planned “perfect symmetry” between the stage and the auditorium, inspired by Pallado’s theatre architecture, was meant to establish a symbolic equilibrium between the performance and the public, while specific stage designs and a particular arrangement of the lower gallery allowed for this symbolic interaction, and the actual popular theatre to become reality. The librettos, the musical arrangements and the performances were analysed in connection to a particular social-hierarchical setting in the auditorium, and in comparison with “high” music performances at the Théâtre du Châtelet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Ostap Sereda spoke under a provocative title, an actual quotation from the Ukrainian 1920s comedy, “’Is it serious or Ukrainian?’ Discourse on Ukrainian musical theatre as high/popular culture in the late Russian Empire.” This question reflected an ironic attitude towards Ukrainian music and culture in general, a tendency that had a longer prehistory in which nineteenth-century complex musical developments in Russian Ukraine played a major role. On the one hand, bilingual (Russian-Ukrainian) early nineteenth-century vaudevilles inspired both the musical production in the Russian capitals of Moscow and St. Petersburg, where Ukrainian characters spoke the vernacular for a more comic effect, and the emergence of indigenous “Little Russian” (i.e. Ukrainian) theatre troupes in Ukraine. The “Little Russian” operetta, strongly influenced by the French and Italian opera comique and the most financially successful genre yet the one believed to be made for lower strata, largely provincial public and resented by serious music critics, had a tradition of its own. The imperial government’s tightening of policy towards Ukrainian culture in the 1860s made comic musical theatre one of the few legitimate ways to publicly manifest local, if only “Little Russian” and comic, rather than “true” Ukrainian and serious, identity.
The participants reassembled for a second session, chaired by Barbara Boisits from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Philipp Ther spoke of “Anti-Occidentalism and anti-Semitism in Czech and Polish Cultural Elites. Discourses About Operettas in Prague and Lemberg in the late 19th Century.” An example of comparative history, the paper demonstrated that an attempt to nationalise operas as “high” art in Central Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century was a process that had a corresponding antipode, namely the construction of an image of operetta as alien and damaging the taste of a potentially national audience. Explicit Anti-Semitic and Anti-Western commentary was more common for Lemberg than Prague, yet they were part of one phenomenon that helped delaying creation of indigenous operetta repertoire well into the last decades of the nineteenth century.
The Croatian case was thoroughly covered by the three following presenters, Vjera Katalinić, Sanja Majer-Bobetko and Nada Bezić. Katalinić’s paper “Opera and Operetta in 19th-Century Zagreb: Composers, Librettists, Topics - A Comparison” made a statistical analysis of the repertoire of the Croatian National Theatre in the period between 1860 to 1900. The analysis was threefold: first, the number of opera and operetta performances was compared with other types of musical production in the repertoire, a discussion which involved revision of terminology. Second, the amount of performances of opera and operetta was viewed from the perspective of whether the authors were local or foreign, which unavoidably followed the discussion on the controversial issue of the “first Croatian operetta.” Finally, the local production was analysed in detail from the perspective of these works’ composers, librettists and topics, thus giving evidence of a converging stylistic preferences by the musical directors of the National Theatre and its public.
Majer-Bobetko, on the other hand, “Croatian Late 19th-Century Opera and Operetta in Croatian Musico-Historiographical Syntheses” provided for an analysis of the historiography of the Croatian music in a wider cultural context. She demonstrated that the first, late nineteenth century studies had a varying attitude to local opera and operetta: they either did not mention any relevant opera or operetta within the Croatian Illyrian movement, as Franko Kuhač did, or acknowledged local operas and even some operettas but failed to the first operetta composed to a Croatian libretto, as Vjenceslav Novak did. Majer-Bobetko showed that the first attempts to treat operetta less normatively and as a part of a national musical culture date as late as the 1920s.
Finally, Nada Bezić spoke of the divergent locations of opera and operetta performances in the nineteenth-century Zagreb. Her “From the Theatre to the Aristocratic Drawing-Room: Locations of Opera and Operetta Performances in Zagreb” stirred an animated discussion, especially the mention of a particular elitist intellectual club Kvak [Frog] that staged parody-operettas in its own, and later other, more mainstream locations. While operas were in the repertoire of virtually all Zagreb theatres, the architecture and symbolic decoration of the National Theatre, completed in 1895 by the Fellner and Helmer architecture company, provided for a possibility of both “high” and “low” performances. However, operetta maintained its distinct locations and public throughout the nineteenth century, performed at clubs, cafes and finally at the Croatian Musical Institute and Kvak’s own summer concert hall in Zagreb.
The following session, chaired by Sven Oliver Müller from the University of Bielefeld, focussed on trans-national and trans-continental cultural transfers in the history of opera and operetta. Markian Prokopovych’s “From Nicolai to Offenbach: International Operetta at the Budapest Opera House, 1880s-1900s” demonstrated how the arrival of young Gustav Mahler in Budapest in 1888 catalysed a larger discussion on the place of the “light genres”, particularly Offenbach’s operetta, in the repertoire of the Hungarian Royal Opera House, during the time of Mahler’s directorship (1888-1891). While hardly a novelty in Budapest, where at least two other theatres were in competition with the opera house and the fourth one was about to be built, the “light” genres when staged by Mahler received a particular yet varying reception, from the excessively positive one for Nicolai’s “The Merry Widows of Windsor” to a complete failure with early Offenbach’s “Marriage by the Lanterns.” While Mahler’s agenda for the opera repertoire has failed on the short run along with the radical press becoming increasingly hostile, and sometimes even outspokenly Anti-Semitic towards him, his idea of staging “The Tales of Hoffmann,” when realised years later, in 1900, proved a great success and an out-dated acknowledgement.
William A. Everett spoke on North American adaptations of European operettas in his “From Central Europe to Broadway: Adaptations of Continental Operettas for the American Stage, 1915-1917.” The first such adaptation, of Franz Lehar’s “Die Lustige Witwe” in Broadway, 1907, provoked a greater interest in Viennese operetta productions. The paper concentrated on the adaptations by the Hungarian-born and ethnic German American composer Sigmund Romberg: “The Blue Paradise” (1915), “Her Soldier Boy” (1916) and “Maytime” (1917). Original archival recordings were played. A great degree of musical and textual creativity allowed American composers to rework the score and play their own songs alongside the ones from the original production, the former often full of romantic nostalgia and references to the previous war. An animated discussion rose on the issue of whether or not the high degree of creativity in the adaptation of an original musical piece demonstrated the latter piece’s low rank in the musical “pantheon” of high culture, and vice versa.
Several lecturers then dealt with Italy and the popular music theatre in the late nineteenth century. There is the common myth that opera was especially popular in its country of origin. But in fact, while music theatres drew mass audiences in Italy, operetta got a relatively late start there. After Vjera Katalinić read excerpts of Carlotta Sorba’s “The Origin of the Entertainment Industry: The Operetta in Late Nineteenth-century Italy,” Rafaella Bianchi presented her provocative “Was Opera in Italy the 19th-Century's Pop Music? Diverse Aspects of Opera in Milan before Italian Unification.” While historically opera has been associated with “high” culture for a number of reasons, the speaker argued that, when diverse definitions of popular culture are applied to the pre-unification Italian opera, its understanding as “popular music” is in fact conceivable. As a popular genre, it was then used for propaganda and other political purposes, further politicising initially aesthetic terms of “high” and “low” culture. Discussion on the paper concentrated on the questions of, first, necessity of separating musical and performative aspects of opera and, second, on whether or not an artefact should be widely popular to be used for political purposes.
Finally, Jutta Toelle chronologically complimented with her “Italian New Theatres for New People? The Italian Politeami and Their Repertoires.” While the sheer number of new theatres in the post-unification Italy would likely impress an informed scholar, the question remained as to why exactly there was a need for a theatres of a new kind, different from traditional opera houses. The paper argued that the rise of the so-called politeami theatres was provoked by the emergence of a new public and the fact that new kinds of productions and entertainment – from operetta to gymnastic performances, horse riding shows, cinema and even hypnosis – would have been inconceivable in traditional old opera houses alongside the opera performances.
The closing discussion, lead by Barbara Boisits, Peter Stachel and Sven Oliver Müller, concentrated on general issues of the need of terminological revision of both cultural terms of “high” and “low” culture and musical terms of “opera” and “operetta.” This terminological discussion touched upon the question whether or not it would be necessary to go to the “original” script to determine the correct term for a musical piece, and whether it would at all be possible to do so in the light of the fact that the same production was often called differently depending on the time and the location of the performance.
A prospective publication of the revised and expanded conference papers is being envisioned in the book series published by the Croatian Musicological Society.