Offenbach’s “Ritter Blaubart” In Cottbus: Reviving Felsenstein
Offenbach’s glorious sex-and-social-conventions farce Barbe-bleue was a huge hit in Paris and Vienna back in the 1860s, when Hortense Schneider
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Jacques Offenbach 2019: Celebtrating His 200th Birthday
In June 2019 the world will celebrate the 200th birthday of Jacques Offenbach, “The 19th century’s most popular musical-theatre composer.”
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A Major Star Of 19th Century French Musical Theatre: Jean-François Philibert Berthelier
Jean-François Philibert Berthelier (b Panissières, Loire, 14 December 1828; d Paris, 29 September 1888) was a comic actor and singer
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“Emerging From The Closet Of Representation“: Homosexuality And Same-Sex Marriage On The Musical Theater Stage
The genre operetta was invented around 1850 in Paris, as a new and independent musical theater form in the modern
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Meyerbeer’s “Les Huguenots” Return To Berlin: With Juan Diego Flórez
Anyone seriously interested in Offenbach will also be interested in Meyerbeer, and the various other composers successful in the first
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“Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde”: Hervé’s Masterwork Rediscovered
French composer Hervé (1825-1892) has been so overshadowed by his competitor, friend and contemporary Jacques Offenbach that hardly anyone remembers
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Palazzetto Bru Zane: “Let’s Talk About Hervé!”
Palazzetto Bru Zane has devoted its energy to the rediscovery of forgotten (French) operas, so far. But now, an opéra
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A New Generation of (Yummy?) Operetta Singers
The students of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy,“ in Leipzig, will present their version and vision
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Broadway Does Operetta. Or: From Dallas To Philadelphia
The folks in Philadelphia are at it again this weekend. They will be presenting a concert called Broadway Does Operetta,
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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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The (Fun) Little Faust
Mephisto warned us right at the beginning of tonight’s performance that we wouldn’t leave weeping over Marguerite’s fate. I sincerely
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“Orphee Aux Enfers” At Iford Festival: An Enjoyable Romp
The UK based company Opera della Luna has just presented their version of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld at the
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Offenbach’s sexy medieval spoof “Geneviève de Brabant”
Of the great opéras-bouffes of Offenbach’s early years, the one which has suffered the most inexplicable eclipse in the 20th
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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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“Zehn Mädchen und kein Mann”: Early Franz von Suppé In Hannover
The girls are at it, again. Yes, the students of the Hannover Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien are tackling
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“L’Île de Tulipatan”: Playing With Notions Of Gender And The Idea Of Same-Sex-Marriage
Even after the success of his full-length opéras-bouffes and the disappearance of the constrictions which had limited him in earlier
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Offenbach’s “La Princesse de Trébizonde” Returns To The Stage
Jacques Offenbach’s La Princesse de Trébizonde premiered in 1869 in the fashionable spa town of Baden Baden – in their
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Is There An Ideal “La Belle Hélène” Recording – With Sex Appeal?
In early 2015, the Komische Oper presented their very first Operetta Symposium, dealing with the “kinky” side of the genre
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Marie GEISTINGER (b Graz, 26 July 1836; d Klagenfurt, 30 September 1903)
Born in Graz to theatrical parents, Geistinger first went on the stage as a child and had an early exposure
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Here Come The Lunatics: Jeff Clarke Talks About Operetta In The UK
Opera in the UK doesn’t only happen in big London theatres with rob-the-bank ticket prices. All over the country there
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Hamburg’s “Belle Hélène” To Be Realeased On DVD?
Here it is, a first look at the new La belle Hélène in Hamburg. The large-scale production by Renaud Doucet
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Double-Whopper: “La belle Hélène” in Hamburg and Berlin
It is somewhat astonishing that all of a sudden Offenbach’s La belle Hélène is returning to the stages of Northern
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Zulma Bouffar: The “Other” Prima Donna of the Offenbach-Age
Zulma Bouffar (b Nérac, 24 May 1841) made her first appearance on the stage at the age of six, at
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The Original Operetta-Diva: Hortense Schneider
She was the six-year shooting star of Offenbach’s Théâtre des Variétés series whose dazzling career declined at the same time
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The Very Model of a Modern-Day Burlesque
If you like Burlesque – in its historical form – you might enjoy Hostel Hermannstraße as performed by Ades Zabel
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Exporting Operette: The World Is Not Enough
What became eventually known as “operetta” or “opérette” didn’t start its life under that name. The earliest works of the
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“L’Alchimiste” at the Opéra de Barie
So it’s going to be “Hervé Forever” this summer. Apart from the performance in Caen in July, there is also
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Hervé’s “L’Elixir” at the Festival Viva Voce de Caen
Some people think that Hervé is the real father of “operetta”. And, of course, they’re right. His great opéra-bouffes are
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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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HERVÉ: Florimond Ronger (b Houdain, 30 June 1825; d Paris, 3 November 1892)
Florimond Ronger, known to the musical and theatrical world simply as Hervé, was one of the great characters in,
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The 19th century’s most popular musical-theatre composer: Jacques Offenbach
The son of a German bookbinder, music-teacher and cantor called Eberst, but known as Offenbach, the young Jacob was given
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Offenbach, the Opéra-Comique and “Vert-Vert”
In 1867, the year of the extravagant Paris Exposition Universelle , Offenbach’s success reached its apogee. His new opera bouffes,
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LA FILLE DE MADAME ANGOT Opéra-comique in 3 acts
Along with Planquette’s Les Cloches de Corneville, La Fille de Madame Angot (Théâtre des Fantaisies-Parisiennes, Brussels, 4 December 1872) was
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LE PETIT FAUST Opéra-bouffe in 3 acts
Of Hervé’s three most successful full-scale opéras-bouffes, it was Le Petit Faust, the only one of the three to parody
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The most successful composer of the English opéra-bouffe and -comique stage: Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Seymour Sullivan (b London, 13 May 1842; d London, 22 November 1900). Educated at the Chapel Royal, the Royal
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CHILPÉRIC: Opéra-bouffe in 3 acts and 4 tableaux
One of the most successful of extravagantly humorous full-length opéras-bouffes written and composed by the playwright/composer Hervé, Chilpéric went even
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