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The origins of the entertainment industry: the operetta in late nineteenth-century Italy

2006; Routledge; Volume: 11; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13545710600806730

1469-9583

Carlotta Sorba,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Abstract Abstract How does a new successful musical genre impose itself, define its audiences and repertoires and eventually replace older genres? The essay examines the case of operetta from its French origins to the specific diffusion in the Italian entertainment system. Here the popularity of the ‘little opera’ coming from France and later from Vienna grew along with a new system of theaters, politeama and café chantants. They were run by a new generation of entrepreneurs and publishers such as Sonzogno, interested in diffuse new forms of musical leisure. The rising of the Italian operetta found strong resistance from the traditional opera world at the turn of the nineteenth century, when the distinction between artistic music and music as entertainment was being consolidated and we can find a sort of passing of the baton between opera and operetta as the major popular musical genre. Keywords: Cultural consumptionentertainment industrytheatermusical genreoperettaaudiences Notes 1 An interesting problem, which has not been sufficiently analyzed, despite recent interest in the situation in France, is the relationship between the state's prolonged and consistent tutelage of theater, which was unparalleled in other countries, and the development, centered in Paris, of an entertainment industry in the second half of the 1800s. See for example Hemmings (1993 Hemmings, F. W. J. 1993. The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth Century France, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]) and Guardenti (2000 Guardenti, R. 2000. “L'industria dello spettacolo: il teatro in Francia nel secondo Ottocento”. In Storia del teatro moderno e contemporaneo, vol. II, Il grande teatro borghese, Edited by: Alonge, R. and Bonino, G. Davico. 513–564. Turin: Einaudi. [Google Scholar]). 2 Yon (2002 Yon, J. C. 2002. La création du théatre des Bouffes-Parisiens (1855 – 1862) ou la difficile naissance de l'opérette. Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 3: 575–600. [Google Scholar]) brilliantly reconstructs the story based on Bureau des Théatres files. 3 For the definition, see the entry ‘Operetta’ in the Dizionario della musica e dei musicisti, 1984: 415 – 27. The Dictionnaire de la musique moderne (Castil-Blaze 1828), claims that the term has a long history: it was coined disparagingly by Mozart for ‘certain dramatic abortions, those miniature compositions in which one finds only cold songs and couplets from vaudeville.’ 4 Quoted from the Italian edition of Kracauer (1984 Kracauer, S. 1984. Jacques Offenbach e la Parigi del suo tempo, 128–129. Casale Monferrato: Marietti. [Google Scholar]: 128 – 9); the test was published in Amsterdam in 1937. 5 This was particularly pronounced in Paris and in London's West End, where commerce and spectacle were closely intertwined. See Rappaport (2000 Rappaport, E. 2000. Shopping for Pleasure. Women in the Making of London West End, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]). 6 For the sequence of productions, see the Dizionario della musica e dei musicisti, 1984: 417, as well as the synthesis in Traubner (1983 Traubner, R. 1983. Operetta. A Theatrical History, New York: Doubleday. [Google Scholar]). 7 A good analysis of Viennese operetta as genre and cultural practice, the expression of a sort of golden age of the Austrian capital, is found in Crittenden (2000 Crittenden, C. 2000. Johann Strauss and Vienna. Operetta and the politics of popular culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]). On Strauss as a cultural totem, see also Csàki (1998 Csàki, Moritz. 1998. Ideologie der Operette und Wiener Moderne: Ein Kulturhistorischer essay, Vienna: Bohlau Verlag. [Google Scholar]). 8 See Offenbach (1979 Offenbach, J. 1979. Offenbach en Amérique. Notes d'un musicien en voyage, Paris: La Flute de Pan. [1876] [Google Scholar]). On the arrival of the operetta in America and its role in the development of American musical theater, see Root (1981 Root, D. L. 1981. American Popular Stage Music 1860 – 1880, Ann Harbor: Umi Research Press. [Google Scholar]). 9 The marginalization, or rather historicalization, of an evaluative perspective of this type is one of the elements that most distinguish a social-cultural historical approach from a historiographies one; see Herbert (2003 Herbert, T. 2003. “Social history and music history”. In The Cultural Study of Music, a Critical Introduction, Edited by: Clayton, M., Herbert, T. and Middleton, R. 146–156. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). Also see the considerations of Porrier (2004 Porrier, P. 2004. Les enjeux de l'histoire culturelle, Paris: editions du Seuil. [Google Scholar]: 300 – 9) in his recent synthesis. 10 See Santoro (2002 Santoro, M. 2002. What is a “cantautore”? Distinction and authorship in Italian (popular) music. Poetics, 30: 111–132. [Google Scholar]: 130), with particular reference to Bachtin (1981). 11 However, the game of influences often works in both directions. In his ‘Sul teatro d'operetta,’ Bortolotto (1971 Bortolotto, Mario. 1971. Sul teatro d'operetta. Nuova rivista musicale italiana, 3: 420–442. [Google Scholar]) asks: ‘How much Offenbach does one hear in Gounod or Ravel; and how much of Gilbert and Sullivan was interiorized by Britten?’ 12 An early analysis of the Italian situation is found in Tonelli (1998 Tonelli, A. 1998. Ballando ballando. La storia d'Italia a passi di danza (1815 – 1996), Milan: Angeli. [Google Scholar]: 19 – 53). 13 For the situation in England, see Bayley (1986 Bayley, P., ed. 1986. Music-halls. The business of pleasure, Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. [Google Scholar]). 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