Walter Felsenstein Revisited: A New Biography
Stage director Walter Felsenstein (1901-1975) is famous for various things: he founded the Komische Oper in East Berlin after WW2
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Arthur Schnitzler And His Operettas
Playwrite and author Arthur Schnitzler had a special relationship with music, not least, because many of his famous texts were
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Rare First Editions of Offenbach & Co.
Getting hold of scores – for operettas – has always been a challenge. Admittedly, the situation has become a lot
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Ethan Mordden’s New American Operetta History
Anyone who has walked into a bookshop in the USA recently will have noticed that Ethan Mordden’s attractively packaged Anything
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Uncool (And Proudly So): Mel Atkey’s “Breaking Into Song”
Mel Atkey’s new book Breaking Into Song has arrived: a collection of articles, essays and interviews from the past 35
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Charell & Bendow: Honored As Great Personalitites In Berlin’s History
Yes, it fills us with joy – and a little bit of pride too – that the brochure entitled Persönlichkeiten
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“In der Bar zum Krokodil”: Schlager-Music Exhibition
The exhibition is not exactly new, but it seems to be so successful that it is being passed around: In
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Glamour For Goebbels. Or: The First Sperm Donor Operetta In History
If you check the International Movie Data Base, you’ll find that the Nazi film operetta Liebespremiere (1943) is an adaptation
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Operation Fledermaus
Yes, it is somewhat unusual: a crime novel that is not directly set in the operetta world, but references that
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“Der Kongress Tanzt”: A New Exhibition At The Belvedere In Vienna
You all know that the Congress of Vienna in 1815 is the historical backdrop to quite a few famous operettas
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“Die schöne Helena” As A WW2 Drama Of Homosexuality
Considering that Offenbach’s La belle Hélène recently received two extremely “gay” interpretations at the opera houses of Hamburg and Berlin
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“Das Verdächtige Saxophon”: Albrecht Dümling’s Classic Re-Published
Finally: Albrecht Dümling’s great big book on music and operetta in Nazi times, Das verdächtige Saxophon, has been re-published. After
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The Man Behind “Die Fledermaus”: New Biography of Richard Genée
As the author of Die Fledermaus (1874) and a whole series of other famous Strauss operettas, Richard Genée is not
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Popular Musical Theatre In London And Berlin: 1890 To 1939
Here is something really yummy: a collection of essays dealing with various aspects of popular musical theater at the beginning
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“Inszenierte Moderne”: A New Study About Operetta, Musical Comedy And Revue
One of the most interesting young German scholars in the field of operetta research and examining the entertainment industry, Tobias
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Vera Kálmán: “Tonkunst” Issue Dedicated to Composer’s Widows
Here it is: the latest issue of Die Tonkunst. After a recent Bluebeard special that included a big essay on
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Two New Ábrahám Biographies
You could call it the battle of the biographers. Who will be first? Who will be better? Who will have
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Who Will Be The Savior of Operetta in the 21st Century: Volker Klotz Or Barrie Kosky?
This week-end, a new production of Offenbach’s La belle Hélène premieres at the Komische Oper Berlin. Its director, Barrie Kosky,
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Galgenhumor: An Interview About Nostalgia & World War 1
Two researchers from the Austrian Cabaret Archive (ÖKA), Iris Fink and Hans Veigl, have just published a 275 page book
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A Definitive Richard Tauber Biography?
You could have been fooled into thinking there cannot possibly be anything new to say on the topic of Richard
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A Vienna Heart in the Star-Spangled Banner: Bruno Granichstaedten
The Austrian music historian, film director and author Ernst Kaufmann has written a biography of his uncle – composer Bruno
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Let the Facts Speak for Themselves: A Novel Tauber Biography
Martin Sollfrank has written an exhaustive, 568 page biographical documentation entitled Musik war sein Leben: Richard Tauber – Weltstar des
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Vienna’s Merry Apocalypse
A little book dealing with the entertainment industry during the Great War: Galgenhumor. Kleine Kunst im Großen Krieg. Ein Beitrag
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Aspects of “Barbe-bleue”: Essays on Musical Theater Versions of the Bluebeard Legend
Here’s a brand-new bundle of essays on musical theater version of the Bluebeard legend, published in a special edition of
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Fritzi Massary Revisited: An Interview With Her New Biographer
Take a deep breath and prepare yourself: there will be – finally – a new and English language biography of
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Stefan Frey’s Biography of Emmerich Kálmán – in English
In 2003, Henschel Verlag of Berlin published Unter Tränen lachen, a German-language “operetta biography” of composer Emmerich Kálmán. The author,
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“The Funny He-She Ladies”: A New Book on Cross-Dressing in London
There is a new book by Neil McKenna about “Two Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England“ entitled Fanny & Stella.
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Did Leo Fall Suffer From Serious Drug Addiction?
It’s always a good time to pay attention to Leo Fall (1873-1925) because his operettas – Der fidele Bauer, Die
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“Horrible Prettiness or Satanic Subversiveness”?
“Gender Studies” are something on everyone’s lips these days. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, the operetta world has hardly taken note of
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Essays On Kurt Weill’s Broadway Operetta
Here it is, fresh off the press: A German language collection of texts dealing with Kurt Weill’s only “operetta”, The
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Emily Soldene: In Search of a Singer
I don’t suppose the name means very much nowadays to anyone but a handful of music and theatre historians. Emily
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“Made in Berlin”: Otto Schneidereit Revisited
There’s a lot of talk, again, these days about „Operetta Made In Berlin”—how it differs from other German language types
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Cross-Dressing in Operetta: A New Catalogue from Munich
Now, here’s a topic for a book publication to make our operetta hearts beat faster: Ein Bild von einem Mann
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Gender, Genre & Parody
Quite simply put, this is the best book on Gilbert & Sullivan that I have come across. Not in a
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Operetten Over The Rainbow
Nacktes Fleisch, Frivolitäten, feminin-lamboyante Männer, »blasende Hirten«, selbstbewusste Frauen – die Operetten der 1920er und 1930er Jahre haben mit dem
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Das deutschsprachige Operettenlibretto: Figuren, Stoffe, Dramaturgie
2013 began with some major new publications. One is Heike Quissek’s PhD Das deutschsprachige Operettenlibretto: Figuren, Stoffe, Dramaturgie, written at
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