OPERETTA: A THEATRICAL HISTORY by Richard Traubner, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 461 pp, $29.95 cloth.
Operetta: To the contemporary mind, the form is not only slight but old-fashioned beyond hope of redemption, ancient without ever being classic. What is operetta, anyway? How is one to distinguish it from the opera or the musical (either of which most operettas will claim to be, given half the chance)? In fact, operetta is a theatrical Alsatia, a district of uncertain boundaries between better-defined states, a place where outlaws fourish. It evolved as a small-scale, ironic antidote to humorless romantic opera, then lost its satiric function to the musical and became its own romantic form, warbling about the society-defying loves of princes for gypsies and American heiresses. Operetta died, perhaps, of a social revolution: What marriage today could sufficiently violate social taboos to justify three acts of vocalizing?) The very word is a diminutive, and nowadays it also implies a sneer—operetta is a thing not to be taken seriously.
Here is also the place to learn of Second Empire Paris, intoxicated by Offenbach (who expanded the satirical playlet to include multiple acts, full orchestra and leggy chorines). In Offenbach’s heyday, flatulent translations from the French flooded London, only to be crushed by the morally upright, theatrically trim, musically sophisticated, verbally matchless works of Gilbert and Sullivan; an oft-told tale, theirs, but Traubner supplies the sequel—the pastiches, oriental extravaganzas and Coward-ly confections that succeeded but never equalled G&S.
Then Traubner whirls us away to Vienna, from Strauss (Johann) to Straus (Oscar) to Lehár to Millocker and so on, chronicling the supremacy of the waltz and the decline of satire and plot. Operetta, in renouncing its satirical roots for the sentiment of opera, acclimatized so well to Eastern Europe that it is still beloved and state-supported throughout the region. Later chapters forage as far as New York and duck into Spain for a little—too little—on the local product, zarzuela.
There isn’t anything quite like this book in English. Most operetta books are collections of plot synopses, in which such areas as American operetta and G&S are well-covered. Traubner, who won’t be much help if you’re after a quick synopsis, may be the first writer to dwell on the form, treating operetta as if it were as worthy of note as (good heavens!) opera.
Composer by composer, work by work, the author provides dates, theatres, librettists, stars, length of run, not only for premieres but for every significant revival. Mightn’t some of this data (say, the length of run of every show in its English, French, Austrian and Hungarian versions) have been stashed in an appendix? Too, Traubner’s English is not aboundingly felicitous. There is a great deal of this sort of thing: “Charles Klein provided the silly libretto that had elements of La Perichole, The Mikado, and other works, as did the lyrics, by Thomas Frost and the composer, and, predictably, Sousa’s score.” His catalogue reads as enjoyably as most catalogues do.
The author, though, considers light entertainment Victor Herbert’s job—he has other purposes in mind, namely putting bees in the bonnets of impresarios in search of proven but unfamiliar fare. “It could stand a revival,” is his frequent refrain. But could it? To succeed, classic operettas usually require two things: opulent productions such as only government subsidy can provide today, and elegant stars, vocally proficient and glamorous to a degree. It’s no use gnashing teeth over the public disinterest in Lehár and Herbert with no Richard Taubber or Fritzi Scheff around to put the stuff over.
The triumphant resuscitation of bel canto opera (which Traubner deplores) came about because singers appeared able to do the works justice. Operetta has yet to produce its Callas. Traubner’s partisanship reveals a grand weakness for a good tune—which can prevent his being objective about a theatre piece if he emerged from it humming. But with out real singers, melody can only tantalize.
John Yohalem writes frequently about musical theatre and other performing arts.
Beckett Bookshelf
CANTERS AND CHRONICLES: THE USE OF NARRATIVE IN THE PLAYS OF SAMUEL BECKETT AND HAROLD PTINER by Kristin Morrison, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1983. 228 pp, $20 cloth.
Morrison asserts that, for both authors, the importance of the soliloquy as a means of advancing dramatic action has gradually been superseded by the use of narrative. In support of this thesis, Morrison offers a thorough textual analysis of selected plays of Beckett, ranging from Waiting for Godot to Not I, and of Pinter’s works from The Birthday Party to Silence.
THE RELATIVES New Overbrook Press, 356 Riverbank Rd., Stamford, CT 06903. Numbered copies, 7 intaglio prints, $1,750 unbound in handmade box.
“Inside a flattened cylinder 50 metres round and 16 high” live the unhappy creatures of Samuel Beckett’s The Lost Ones (1971). Their lives are dominated by the obscure conventions of an oppressive society, and they relentlessly search for escape. Beckett’s evocative vision has been rendered in fantastical detail by American artist Charles Klabunde for a limited folio edition of the work, signed by both Beckett and Klabunde.
SAMUEL BECKETT by Charles R. Lyons, Grove Press, New York, NY, 1983. 199 pp, $9.95 paper.
Lyons analyzes the major stage and radio plays of Beckett, including Waiting for Godot, Endgame, All That Fall, Krapp’s Last Tape, Play and Happy Days, and the lesser radio plays and most recent stage pieces, including Words and Music, Cascando, Embers, Eh Joe, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby and Ohio Impromptu, as well as Beckett’s only film script Film. He studies these works as performance pieces in order to uncover the peculiar theatrical conventions introduced and gradually refined and sharpened by Beckett.
SAMUEL BECKETT by Charles R. Lyons, Grove Press, New York, NY, 1983. 199 pp, $9.95 paper.
The first collection of the three plays which played successfully in New York in 1983 under the direction of Alan Schneider. Ohio Impromptu and What, Where continue to define Beckett’s nihilistic worldview with even greater clarity and theatrical minimalism. Catastrophe, dedicated to Vaclev Havel and first published in New Yorker magazine, is a brief allegory about political repression of the artist.
