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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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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Reading “The Cambridge Companion To Operetta” In Times Of Self-Isolation
The paperback edition of this fascinating, useful and, on the whole, well researched book sells for about 20 Euros on
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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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Revisiting Kurt Gänzl’s “Guide to Musical Theatre On Record”
“Wonderfully opinionated, outrageously frank, and always sensible” Yes, that was me. I suppose it still is … but in 1991
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THE NEW MOON: A Romantic musical play by Oscar Hammerstein & Sigmund Romberg
The team responsible for that overwhelming hit of 1926, The Desert Song, mined a similar vein for their next collaboration,
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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 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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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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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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Ass-Dur At Bar jeder Vernunft. Or: “Les deux aveugles” Reloaded
In his new book Der Klang von Paris – “The Sound(s) of Paris” – Volker Hagedorn embarkes on “a trip
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“Une danseuse à l’Opéra”: Kurt Gänzl Examines The Phenomenon of Man And Mistress In The Second Empire
‘Une danseuse à l’Opéra’ – it was a phrase which, under the brilliance of the French Second Empire, had a
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Google Search: “What is Operetta?” And “Is The Phantom of the Opera an Operetta?”
The Operetta Research Centre was, this week, undergoing technical maintenance, in the course of which supremo Kevin Clarke came up
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A Franz von Suppé Biography In French By José-Luis Munoz
Be careful what you wish for, says the old adage. You may get it … and in spades! Forty years
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“Dorothy” By Alfred Cellier: World Premiere Recording
Before the building of railways into London from the rest of south-east England in the third quarter of the nineteenth
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The History of Jacques Offenbach’s “La Princesse de Trébizonde”
Originally produced at Baden-Baden during the 1869 summer season, with the young Mdlle Périer in its principal travesty rôle, La
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Ivor Novello’s “The Dancing Years”: The First Complete Recording
The effect of Ivor Novello’s music on me was immediate: I remember the first time I heard his songs on
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High Kicks, Or: The History Of The CanCan In English-Language Theater
To say precisely who were the first English dancers to perform the cancan in the English-language theatre is pretty impossible.
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Charles Hayden Coffin: A ‘Gay’ Matinee Idol Revisited
A combination of circumstances led me, a year or three ago, to a little coven of enthusiasts fascinated by the
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“La comédie musicale britannique XIXème et XXème siècle”: A New Collection Of Essays In English, French And German
Just out is a large-size almost catalogue-like publication in English, French and German in the Revue Musicorum series, no. 20/2018.
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Trying To Define Opéra-Bouffe: An Article From “The Era” 1870 About “Chilpéric” At The Lyceum
In his 2 volume biography Emily Soldene: In Search of a Singer Kurt Gänzl chronicles the initial success of opéra
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“The Pretty Polish Girl Who Sat Astride Her Virtue”: Early Opéra-Bouffe Star Joseph Kelm (1805-1882)
My last post and its original five pictures, borrowed from the gold mines of Blois, included four taken from the
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W H Payne: Reconstructing The Career Of A Pantomime Artist And Supreme Clown
When you are researching the past, and the answers and facts don’t fall obviously into place, you just have to
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Amy Sheridan: Royal Milkmaid, Queen Of Burlesque, And Concubine
Amy Sheridan was something of a phenomenon. When she died, in 1878, at a Brighton boarding house, aged 39, of
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“Hervé par lui-même” Presented By Pascal Blanchet At Palazzetto Bru Zane
It has been a splendid winter. Three new musical-theatre works – one English, two French – have crossed my desk,
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Revisiting G. B. Shaw And Oscar Straus: Bravo Munich!
I’ve got a book and a CD to review, plus family arriving in a few days, and a bottle of
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Offenbach-Star “Mlle Géraldine.” Or: Every Picture Hides A Story
Many years ago, when I was collecting illustrations for my musico-theatrical books, I haunted e-bay. Bought something weekly. But then
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A New Biography: “André Messager. Le passeur de siècle” By Christophe Mirambeau
The Musical Theatre book of the decade. I sha’n’t gush. Well, I’ll try not to. But … I thought that
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Kinky Boots? Kurt Gänzl Talks About 19th Century Operetta
Kurt Gänzl is no stranger to readers of these pages. As the author of The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre
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Theatrical Mythology, or The Best Thing About Her Singing Was Her Looks: Blanche Roosevelt
Theatrical mythology has been curiously and undeservedly kind to some folk. Miss Tucker from Ohio went from failure to failure
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Offenbach And Opera Rara. Or: Waiting For A Recording Of The Original French “Robinson Crusoé”
It’s interesting how you can have a full cast recording sitting on your CD shelf for decades, and it never
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Offenbach’s “Robinson Crusoe”: Bring On The Cannibals
Daniel Defoe’s shipwrecked hero (1719) and his man Friday seem to have made their first appearance on the musical stage
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