Event

Title: Operetta Canon Formation and the Journey to Prestige

Is there an operetta canon? Considering the very small number of works performed today, the answer would seem to be “yes.” But early operetta was antithetical to canonicity, created as disposable popular entertainment. In this talk, I will examine the genre’s journey from the commercial theaters of nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna to the small group of works we find in the modern opera house. I argue that canon formation was a process begun long before operetta’s decline as a genre. The transformation required by canonicity—from contemporary to historical text—was part of a larger debate about operetta’s own aesthetic instability, and thus a major influence on the genre’s twentieth-century development in Vienna. I will discuss several moments of canonicity, including Die Fledermaus’s first performance at the Wiener Hofoper in 1893, Wilhelm Karczag’s programing at the Theater an der Wien in 1901, and the premiere of Franz Lehár’s Giuditta at the Staatsoper in 1934. Finally, I will discuss the implications of an alternate canon of operetta recently proposed by Barry Kosky of the Komische Oper Berlin, a canon founded not on “quality” but rather subversion.