“Grimm”: Tomorrow’s Stars In Today’s Hit-Show
Yes, here it finally is: the original cast album and DVD version of Grimm. This fairy tale musical, with some
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Chita Rivera Sings Robert Stolz? The Cast Album Of “The Visit”
Listening to Kander & Ebb’s The Visit – their adaptation of Durrenmatt’s Besuch der alten Dame – with an operetta
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Top 10 Hottest Operetta Hunks?
Sometimes you wonder why the opera world – of all possible spaces – can pull off such a stunt, but
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Seven Brides For Seven Brothers: A New Cowboy Cast Album
It would seem that cowboys are back en vogue everywhere, not just in Hollywood with blockbusters such as Django Unchained
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Race And Operetta: The Next Frontier?
It is often interesting to compare how researchers in different parts of the Western world look at art forms in
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Oscar Straus – Ein deutscher Offenbach?
Yes, there’s a new book on Oscar Straus, that often over-looked composer of Ein Walzertraum but also of Die lustigen
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Kunst der Oberfläche: Operette zwischen Bravour & Banalität
The Komische Oper Berlin – together with researchers Bettina Brandl-Risi and Clemens Risi – has put together a highly diverse
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The Big Operetta “Virgin Cherry Pop”: A New Study By Albert Gier
A great big new academic book on operetta, in German: Professor Albert Gier, renowned libretto researcher at the University of
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Could “The Song Of Norway” Be Staged In Disney’s “Frozen” Fasion For A New Generation?
If you have any teenage girls – or younger – in your circle of friends, chances are high that you’ve
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MILF Scene of the Year: A New “Nacht in Venedig” From Mörbisch
There is no shortage of Eine Nacht in Venedig recordings. Some of them are all-time classics, such as the Elisabeth
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A Live-Stage “Show Boat” On DVD: For The First Time?
When the San Francisco Opera puts on a show like Show Boat it raises expectations. The company has a chorus
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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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A Double-Disc Of Herbert’s “Dream City And The Magic Knight”
Victor Herbert is best known today for half a dozen elaborately musical operettas composed in the first decade and a
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A New “Duchess of Chicago” From Ohio Light Opera
As everyone knows, the Ohio Light Opera is one of the prime performance venues for lesser known works of Emmerich
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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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“The Golden Apple”: A Holy Grail For Musical Theatre Buffs
Applause now, please, for PS Classics and Lyric Stage of Irving, Texas, whose combined resources bring us the first complete
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German Cast Recordings Of “West Side Story”
Today, the Opera Leipzig will present a new production of West Side Story. Not at the Musikalische Komödie, but in
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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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Forbidden But Not Forgotten: “Entartete Operette” In Historic Recordings
The label Intense Media has issued a 10 CD box with so called “Degenerate Music,” i.e. music and recordings by
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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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Cole Porter In Hollywood: Or What We Can Learn From John Wilson
Yes, Mr. John Wilson and his orchestra are at it again. After they presented Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate at
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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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Josh Groban Sets An Example With “Stages”
Here it is: a album of Josh Groban singing musical comedy. The American pop tenor has squeezed 15 famous (and
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“Moscow, Cheryomushki”: Remembering Russian Operetta
It’s a grand day in Moscow today, filled with military parades. Perhaps it’s the appropriate time to remember one of
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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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The Hungarian Connection: Reclaiming The Repertoire
Vienna and Budapest: those are two important fixtures in the operetta universe. And two highly profitable marketing terms. There are
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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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“Sluts” Are Great Singers Too: The Return Of Operetta-Diva Julia Migenes
If you live in Germany and are interested in classical music, you probably know the broschure concerti. They have a
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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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Willem Mengelberg Conducts Operetta
True, most people will not think of Willem Mengelberg as an operetta conductor. Instead, he became internationally famous for his
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Frida Weber-Flessburg: A Voice Survives Auschwitz
No, Frida Weber-Flessburg (1890-1943) is not one of those fabled operetta divas whose career the Nazis destroyed, but whose memory
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Discovering The Joys Of The Orient
I have never seen Kismet, the 1953 musical, although like everyone else of a certain age, I know some of
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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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“The Only Music Worth Listening To Is Operetta”? Re-Visiting Elizabeth Taylor
There is always time for a few little curiosities. Take, for example, the movie Cynthia (1947) starring Elizabeth Taylor –
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“Madame Pompadour” From London’s West End
Thank God for the internet. Especially, if you’re interested in historical operetta recordings. The website Norbeck, Peters & Ford offers
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