by Joshua Gailey
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| Promotional poster for The Pirates of Penzance, c. 1880. Supply: The Library of Congress. |
There’s a well-known aphorism attributed to the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould: “there’s no such factor as a fish.” Although provocatively phrased, Gould’s level is straightforward: regardless of the usefulness of the time period in our on a regular basis lives, there is no such thing as a strictly organic definition of what constitutes a fish. From an evolutionary perspective, a few of the creatures we name “fish,” like starfish or jellyfish, have much less in widespread with salmon than camels.
The identical is perhaps mentioned of musical genres. We put a number of stake in genres: they affect our personalities, the buddies we hang around with, the garments we put on. Whereas we could know higher than to guage a guide by its cowl, we gladly decide it based mostly on its style, particularly relating to “low” ones like romance or horror. However while you begin trying extra intently, it turns into troublesome to inform the place the road ought to be drawn between this style and that.
The works of Gilbert and Sullivan, paragons of operetta, are an ideal instance. Actually “little opera,” operetta has lengthy been maligned as frivolous, newbie, or inconsequential in comparison with its extra “respectable” cousin. Gilbert and Sullivan themselves had been conscious of those associations and thus averted utilizing the time period, preferring to name their works both “comedian operas” (evoking extra inventive aspirations) or “Savoy operas” (in a savvy little bit of branding selling the Savoy Theatre the place they had been carried out). Composer Arthur Sullivan was particularly bothered by operetta’s status among the many elite, and later in his profession turned, fairly unsuccessfully within the eyes of critics, to grand opera and oratorio, then essentially the most prestigious genres in England.
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| The Savoy Theatre in London, the place a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas had been premiered. Supply: Wikimedia Commons. |
The operetta craze
It’s solely looking back that the time period “operetta” has been utilized to Gilbert and Sullivan, to put their works in a lineage of theatrical spoofs from the final half of the Nineteenth century that mocked opera itself. The time period originated in Paris within the 1840s, when a musician referred to as Hervé started producing little one-act burlesques he known as vaudevilles-opérettes and parodies-opérettes. The style as we all know it, nevertheless, coalesced with Jacques Offenbach, who in 1855 began referring to his immensely in style parodies, like Orpheus within the Underworld (1858), as opérettes. This was a time when opera was turning into more and more pompous—consider the imposing music dramas of Richard Wagner, the hulking grand operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer, or the bold tragedies of Giuseppe Verdi. Operetta mocked these works mercilessly, taking purpose at their contrived plots, their tedious conventions, and, above all, their flamboyant self-importance.
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| Seattle Opera’s 2006 manufacturing of Johann Strauss’s operetta Die Fledermaus. Picture: Rozarii Lynch. |
It was a successful system. Offenbach’s practically 100 operettas sparked a flurry of imitations, and shortly sufficient new epicenters for operetta cropped up throughout Europe. The primary was Vienna, the place composers like Franz von Suppé and the “Waltz King,” Johann Strauss, developed their very own Viennese variations, known as komische Operette. A few of these items, like Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (1874), are nonetheless continuously seen on opera phases. The second, in fact, was London, the place in 1875 the impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte commissioned William S. Gilbert, a workers author for Enjoyable journal (a form of Victorian equal of Mad journal), and Arthur Sullivan, director of the college that later turned the Royal School of Music, to create a one-act operetta, Trial by Jury, to pair with Offenbach’s La Périchole.
Opera vs. operetta
So what units operetta aside from opera? Effectively, very similar to for Gould’s fish, it’s robust to give you common truths. One would possibly say operetta’s combination of tunes with spoken dialogue makes it distinctive; however then what can we make of Carmen or The Magic Flute, which characteristic the identical? Maybe it’s that operettas are shorter than operas, or much less critical in tone? No, Pagliacci clocks in quarter-hour shorter than The Pirates of Penzance, and The Barber of Seville is simply as goofy. Absolutely, then, it’s the truth that operetta takes opera itself as its topic of parody? But even right here there’s precedent within the very origins of comedian opera within the early 18th century, when little spoofs on opera known as intermezzi (like Pergolesi’s La serva padrona from 1733) had been peppered within the breaks between acts of a critical opera.
If there’s one attribute which may maintain true, it’s that operetta was extra nakedly industrial than Nineteenth-century opera. Whereas Verdi and Wagner had been writing more and more advanced music for state-sponsored (or finally, in Wagner’s case, private) theaters, operetta performed in for-profit homes with promotional tie-ins and catchy tunes that aimed shamelessly for the sheet-music market. This legacy of commercialism is sustained by the American musical, for which operetta, and particularly Gilbert and Sullivan, offered the blueprint.
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| Sheet music, like this association for solo piano of tunes from The Pirates of Penzance, was the first manner music unfold commercially within the Nineteenth century. Supply: The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive. |
Finally, opera and operetta (and the musical, for that matter) aren’t all that totally different. Every tells tales on stage by way of music, and it’s equally widespread as of late to see operettas produced at opera homes or industrial theaters. Enthusiastic about style helps us perceive the contexts during which these works had been produced, however we shouldn’t enable the luggage that comes together with it to dictate our listening habits. Opening our ears to the connections between musical traditions reveals a deeper appreciation for the way artwork creates that means in our lives. In any case, there are numerous fish within the sea—it doesn’t matter what we name them.
Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance is on stage October 18–November 1, 2025 at McCaw Corridor. Be taught extra and purchase tickets at seattleopera.org/pirates.
