The Show Will Go On, Or: A New “Großherzogin von Gerolstein” At Komische Oper
“344 Menschen, that‘s besser wie nix!” That’s what intendant Barrie Kosky said when he presented his brand new schedule for
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Remembering Mady Mesplé – France’s “Madame Opérette”
I heard yesterday that Mady Mesplé had died. I have to admit that, to me, she belonged to a past
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Opéra-Comique Overtures By Lecocq, Offenbach & Co.
The record label Naxos has just released a fascinating CD containing French 19th century overtures. One of these is the
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“Trafalgar sur un volcan”: An(other) Operetta About Terrorists?
The German record label cpo has recently released a CD of two short operettas. One of them is a real
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„…der Offenbachstil unserer Zeit…“: Offenbach und die „avancierte“ Regie im frühen 20. Jahrhundert
Karl Kraus und Felix Salten haben 1909 bzw. 1906 Diagnosen zur Situation des musikalischen Unterhaltungstheaters und seiner Rezeption in Wien
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Lillian Russell (1860-1922) Revisited: The Amazing Life Of A “Scandalous” Operetta Diva
With all this free time at home right now I’ve started working my way through various DVD boxes I’ve had
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Offenbach’s Final Farewell: “Die Schöne Lurette” (1880) In Two DDR Versions
As the times of self-isolation continue, so does the catching up on old and new operetta releases that I’ve been
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The Glory Of Offenbach: 2 1/2 Historical “Die Banditen” Recordings From Germany
When the world is under quarantine and everything is shut down because of a new virus – you have lots
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Who Was The Great Opéra-Bouffe Tenor “Potel” – Also Known As “Le Bel Armand”?
The folk who created the musical works of Meilhac, Halévy, Crémieux, Hervé and their colleagues, and of the parallel composers,
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Offenbach’s “Häuptling Abendwind” Or: Queer Operetta For The Price Of A Hawaiian Pizza
Offenbach’s 1857 Vent du soir, ou l’horrible festin is one of his more famous titles in the German speaking theater
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Anton Henseler’s “Jacques Offenbach” (1930) In A First-Ever English Translation
The Offenbach bicentenary might be over – but there are still fascinating things coming out to celebrate the composer. One
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Offenbach’s Hispanic Vogue: “Maître Péronilla” & “La Périchole” On Palazzetto Bru Zane
Offenbach and “The Hispanic Vogue”? As it turns out, there are two interesting new recordings out on Palazzetto Bru Zane
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“Casta Diva”: The World’s First Gay Opera Guide With Two Operettas And Some Hidden Porn
So here it is, the world’s “first gay opera guide,” or so the publisher claims. It’s a small Berlin based
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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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“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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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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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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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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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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“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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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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“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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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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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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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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