Latest Articles
Francesca Zambello’s Version of “Showboat” At Glimmerglass Festival
Showboats gave the theatre-starved people along the Mississippi from the 1880s into the 1920s what they most wanted: melodrama and
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German Operetta On Broadway And In The West End: 1900 To 1940
Considering that there are not that many new books on operetta in English, one must greet Derek B. Scott’s fresh-off-the-press
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“Maestro Offenbach – au grand galop!” A Farewell Book For Albert Gier
Prof. Albert Gier is one of the most famous researchers of musical theater text books. He taught at the University
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“The Pa! The Ma! And the Shah!”: Offenbach’s “Island of Tulipatan” As A “Persian Operatic Bouffonerie”
The one-act l‘île de Tulipatan, written by Jacques Offenbach with his librettists Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru in 1868 for
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Diversity Of Questions & Multiplicity Of Approaches: Kaspar Maase’s “Einführung in die Populärkulturforschung”
How do you solve a problem like – operetta? The question has been asked many times over, especially since so
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Sex, Gender Fluidity, Abortion & Operetta in Northern Ireland: The Offenbach Bicentenary Festival
In August 2019, Northern Ireland Opera presents an Offenbach Bicentenary Festival. The choice of shows for this festival is remarkable, because
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“…was verloren ging”: A New Book About Operetta Before & After 1933
Im Jahr 2005 profilierte sich die Staatsoperette Dresden mit einer überregional vielbeachteten Konferenz, die den Titel Operette unterm Hakenkreuz trug.
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Offenbachs “La Créole” And The Exhibition “Le Modèle Noir” At The Orsay Museum In Paris
It is one of the more amazing developments of recent years that suddenly “entertainment” is included in major exhibitions dealing
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Offenbach Double-Treat in London: “La belle Hélène” and “Orpheus in the Underworld”
With the BBC Proms totally ignoring Offenbach’s bicentenary, it has been left to London’s music colleges, small scale opera companies
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Ethnic Exoticism & Chinese Stereotypes. Or: Lehár’s “Das Land des Lächelns” At The Mörbisch Summer Festival 2019
Bigger is not automatically better, some claim, and that’s especially true for operetta, or operetta festivals. So just because the
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Marked For Immediate Removal: The Grave Of Rosy Barsony In Vienna
In Vienna the great operetta artist Rosy Barsony has found her final resting place. The Jewish performer was born as
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Rüdersdorfer Operettensommer Presents “Frau Luna” In 2019 – With Christian Miebach
The operetta summer festival in Rüdersdorf – just outside of Berlin, down in the south-east – has gone through some
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Ábrahám’s “Märchen im Grand-Hotel” In Hamburg, Hannover, Luzern & Meiningen
After having been forgotten for more than 80 year, new interest in Paul Ábrahám’s Märchen im Grand-Hotel is noticeable. You’ll
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A Man And His Shadow: “Jonas Kaufmann Wien”
No, this is not scheduled as a mid-summer treat to coincide with the various operetta festival productions in Austria: the
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Herbert’s “Babes in Toyland” At Theater Plauen-Zwickau: First German Production
The show title Abenteuer im Spielzeugland might not directly ring a bell. But if you translate it into Babes in
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“Das Feuerwerk” by Paul Burkhard & Erik Charell At Musikalische Komödie Leipzig
When I was about eight years old I have vivid memories of my mother doing the housework, continually singing “Oh,
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Emmerich Kálmán’s “Die Bajadere” At The Summer Festival Of Neustrelitz
Imagine sitting under the stars in a beautiful German Schlossgarten, totally relaxed, watching a hugely enjoyable operetta by Emmerich Kálmán
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“Die lustige Witwe” With Marlis Petersen And Iurii Samoilov – Live From Oper Frankfurt
The original composer chosen für Die lustige Witwe by authors Leo Stein and Victor Léon was: Richard Heuberger. After he
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“Barbe-Bleue” In Lyon: A Night Of Perfection
It is so easy to rip a performance apart. But what do you do if you see perfection? Alright, if
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Dance in Jacques Offenbach’s Théâtre musical léger – Between Imagination, Improvisation and Choreography
Jacques Offenbach could not have asked for a better way to curry favour for theatre priveleges than by publishing a
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Observations Of A Traveling Operetta Enthusiast
One cannot call them “reviews,” since I don’t read music, and a performance has to be either very good or
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Offenbach At 200: “Madame Favart” At The Opéra-Comique In Paris
Would Brother Jacob have been amused? In any case, the Parisian Opéra-Comique (with a hyphen, meaning the actual opera house,
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“Camp: Notes On Operetta.” Or: Getting Back To The “Filthy” Side Of The Genre?
“More than any other art form, fashion most fully embraces and expresses camp’s exuberant aesthetic, excelling in its ability to
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“Grüezi” As A Swiss Exile Answer To “Im Weissen Rössl” – An Interview With Melanie Gehrig Walthert & Reimar Walthert
First you’ve never heard of Grüezi at all, even though the artists who created it are all artists you’ve known
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A New “Madame Pompadour” At Musikalische Komödie, Leipzig
The 1922 Madame Pompadour is not only one of Leo Fall’s last stage works (he died in 1925), it is
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The Queen of Offenbach’s Bouffes: The Life & Career Of Lise Tautin
The Queen of Offenbach’s Bouffes? Oh, yes, I hear the unenlightened nod. ‘Hortense Schneider. We’ve all heard of her’. I:
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A Memorial For J D Wallace: The Man Who Turned “Belle of New York” Into The Biggest Hit Of Its Era
Today, in the expanses of Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, Australia, with only the workmen as witnesses, a vacant-looking plot of earth
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Ábrahám’s “Roxy und ihr Wunderteam” At Komische Oper Berlin: Watch The Live-Stream
At Komische Oper Berlin, Paul Ábrahám’s ‘last’ operetta premiered in a new production by Stefan Huber, with a newly arranged
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The Devil In All Of Us: Suppé’s “Teufel auf Erden” (1878) In Chemnitz
With all the attention being given to Offenbach, it is easy to forget that 2019 is also the bicentenary of
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Offenbach’s “König Karotte” In Hannover: Farewell To The Production By Matthias Davids
German regional theatres excel in searching out rarely performed stage works and often breathing new life into them. Le Roi
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Claude Marius (1850-1896): Opéra-Bouffe’s Male Object Of Desire
Monsieur Marius (Claude Marius Duplany, b Paris, 18 February 1850) was a ‘Frenchman, play producer, actor, raconteur, and optimist’ (they
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The “Voix de Flûte”: Offenbach’s Star Comedian Léonce (1820-1900)
Édouard Théodore Nicole, better known as Léonce (b Paris, 12 January 1820) was a slim, bespectacled (off-stage) low comedian with
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Offenbach’s Superstar Désiré (1823-1873): The Worlds First Jupiter
In 1847 the young comedian known as Désiré asked Hervé for a two-handed musical sketch to play at his benefit.
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“Shooting Star” World-Premiere In Los Angeles: A “Revealing New Musical” by Florian Klein, Thomas Zaufke & Erik Ransom
With an Offenbach conference coming up in June in Cologne that includes a section dedicated to “Discourses and Identities” and
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“La Princesse de Trebizonde”: Revisiting The Offenbach Production In Hildesheim
The World Heritage city of Hildesheim, 20 miles south-east of Hannover, possesses a charming, intimate, 600-seater theatre staging opera, musicals
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Daniel Pantano: Living With Oscar Straus’ “Die Lustigen Nibelungen” For 14 Years
My journey with Oscar Straus all began when a colleague at a music conservatory where we worked handed me the
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