Latest Articles
Bringing Back Abraham: “Märchen Im Grand Hotel” At Staatstheater Hannover
It’s hard to believe, but this is actually only the second fully staged production of Paul Abraham’s Märchen im Grand
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Francisco Barbieri’s “Barberillo de Lavapies”: The Classic BBC Recording In English
This is totally delightful! Francisco Barbieri (1823-94) was the leading exponent of the zarzuela revival of the mid-19th century. He
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Leo Fall’s “Die Dollarprinzessin” With Ulf Schirmer From Munich
As part of their ongoing Leo Fall series, the label cpo has released a full cast album of Die Dollarprinzessin,
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The Songs Of Reynaldo Hahn On Palazzetto Bru Zane
For many, he’s just another famous representative of the Belle Époque, but there are few people that really know much
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Heymann, Offenbach & Ábrahám: New Albums And Concerts With The Capitol Symphony Orchestra
Here’s something truly special: an album of Werner Richard Heymann’s symphonic music that has not been available acoustically earlier and
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The Victor Herbert World Says Goodbye To Restorationist Quade Winter (1951-2019)
The Victor Herbert world says goodbye to one of its restorationists. Quade Winter of Pendleton, Oregon, died of cardiac arrest
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The New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players Give “Iolanthe” A Top Notch Performance
New York’s longest running professional Gilbert & Sullivan company returned to the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College (near Lexington Avenue)
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Dagmar Manzel’s New Solo Album “Sehnsucht” – With Three Paul Abraham Tracks
The fact that Dagmar Manzel has been involved in the Weimar Republic operetta revival at Komische Oper Berlin from the
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“Mary Poppins” As London’s Unashamedly Old-Fashioned Christmas Spectacle
Mary Poppins is an unashamedly old-fashioned “feel-good musical,” at times very pantomimic in style, at times almost a “nostalgic operetta”
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The Revival Of Burlesque In Times Of Gender Debates: “Die 5 Glorreichen Sieben”
They are certainly five magnificent cowboys, but with a twist. The fact that they dance an Offenbach pas de deux
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Ready For Her Close-Up: Desirée Nick In “Gräfin Mariza” At Staatstheater Wiesbaden
There’s exciting news coming from Wiesbaden, Germany. The local Hessisches Staatstheater is presenting a new Gräfin Mariza production, directed by
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F. C. Burnand’s “Ixion”: The Original British Burlesque Hit Of 1863
I first came seriously in contact with F. C. Burnand’s burlesque, Ixion, when working on my biography of burlesque megastar,
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The 2020 Seasons At Léhar Festival In Bad Ischl And In Mörbisch
The operetta festival in Bad Ischl has ended its 2019 summer season with an 8 percent increase in audience numbers,
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“Mr. Offenbach Writes To Us”: Letters To Le Figaro And Other Texts
In their September newsletter, The Jacques Offenbach Society alerts its readers to a new book edited by Jean-Claude Yon. It’s
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“Offenbach Colorature”: The Award-Winning Solo Album By Jodie Devos
Any solo album that starts off by knocking you on the head with the boisterous couplet of the animal trainer
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The Walking Dead? “Operetta Made In Austria” With Ildiko Raimondi and Herbert Lippert
It’s a pretty grand claim to make: “With their multi-media stage show Operetta Made in Austria stage stars Ildiko Raimondi
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Operetta Between The Two World Wars: International Musicological Symposium In Ljubljana
The staging of musical-dramatic works in the late nineteenth century was dominated by operetta, which effectively dictated the programmes of
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Naive Charm: Christine Bovill’s “Tonight You Belong To Me”
A scratchy, smoky voice with a Scottish accent, and a piano: Christine Bovill’s latest show at Bar jeder Vernunft
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Body Shaming In The Operetta World: Or The Cry For Help From Soprano Kathryn Lewek
In his novel Where Angels Fear to Tread, published in 1905, E. M. Forster describes a performance of Lucia di
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Gilbert & Sullivan At Wilton’s Music Hall: An “HMS Pinafore” Performance To Remember
Wilton’s Music Hall is “the most important surviving early music hall to be seen anywhere” (says the Theatres Trust) and
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Dangerous When Wet: Offenbach’s Rediscovered “Le Royaume de Neptune” From the 1874 “Orphée Aux Enfers”
When Germany’s ultra-conservative Offenbach crusader Peter Hawig – who in a recent Jacques Offenbach Society newsletter remarked that “tying” the
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Red Stars: A Study And Exhibition About Socialist Showbiz In Hungary
Operetta appears more and more frequently in scientific discourse, but what about revues and variety shows? It’s a new field
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Evelin Förster Presents: “Sommerfrische (Bade)Chansons” From 1910–1930
The heat wave is back, in Germany at least. And the only appropriate way to cool off – operetta style!
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Offenbach On Arte TV: “Orphée aux enfers” From Salzburg and “Gerolstein” From Cologne
You might wonder whether they are serious – ‘them’ being the French-German Kultursender arte. They are celebrating the 200th birthday
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Ohio Light Opera: Offering Rarities From Kálmán’s “Teufelsreiter” to Novello’s “Perchance to Dream”
Fans of musical theater and operetta will not find a richer, more concentrated banquet of their favorite entertainment than that
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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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