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

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The origins of the entertainmentindustry: the operetta in latenineteenth-century ItalyCarlotta Sorba aa University of Padua,Published online: 18 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Carlotta Sorba (2006) The origins of the entertainment industry:the operetta in late nineteenth-century Italy, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 11:3,282-302, DOI: 10.1080/13545710600806730

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ARTICLES

The origins of the entertainment industry:

the operetta in late nineteenth-century Italy

Carlotta Sorba

University of Padua

Abstract

How does a new successful musical genre impose itself, define its audiences andrepertoires and eventually replace older genres? The essay examines the case ofoperetta from its French origins to the specific diffusion in the Italian entertainmentsystem. Here the popularity of the ‘little opera’ coming from France and later fromVienna grew along with a new system of theaters, politeama and cafe chantants.They were run by a new generation of entrepreneurs and publishers such asSonzogno, interested in diffuse new forms of musical leisure. The rising of the Italianoperetta found strong resistance from the traditional opera world at the turn of thenineteenth century, when the distinction between artistic music and music asentertainment was being consolidated and we can find a sort of passing of the batonbetween opera and operetta as the major popular musical genre.

Keywords

Cultural consumption, entertainment industry, theater, musical genre, operetta,audiences.

Few musical genres lend themselves to an analysis of their development as a

cultural construction as well as the operetta, whose audiences, performance

spaces, and repertoires can be accurately reconstructed in time and space. In

fact, few other genres lend themselves better to a comparative study of national

cultural markets. The operetta was essentially a product of the late nineteenth

century Europe and reflects the taste of a public increasingly desirous of

distraction and entertainment. It was a new post-romantic genre of musical

theater, dedicated to fun and laughter, and rapidly codified with a direct yet

disputed derivation from lyric opera. Operetta thus provides a good vantage

point – and this was what guided my research – from which to analyze major

transformations in the form of cultural consumption, in particular the theater,

during the second half of the nineteenth century. It assumed an epochal

character, and the conscious initiative of a single individual, the versatile and

vivacious Jacques Offenbach, organizer, entrepreneur, propagator and author

of operettas, set the tone for the entire development. Any account of the Italian

Journal of Modern Italian Studies 11(3) 2006: 282 – 302

Journal of Modern Italian StudiesISSN 1354-571X print/ISSN 1469-9583 online ª 2006 Taylor & Francishttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/13545710600806730

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operetta must start with its importation in the late 1800s, and cannot but begin

in Paris and Vienna.

How a musical genre came to be defined

We must first consider France, or Paris rather, after the 1848 Revolution and

the gradual relaxation of the system of privileges that had governed the theater

there. Before the first liberalization of 1864, France, unlike Italy, lacked a

system of free commercial enterprise for performances. Authorization to open a

theater was granted by the Ministry of the Interior through the prefect, and was

subject to specific conditions that were strictly controlled: for each type of

performance, and hence also for each type of public, there was a precise and

limited number of halls.1 In the 1840s, the system was so thoroughly

consolidated that it was very difficult to obtain authorization, even for minor

and very commercial theaters. For example, when in 1843 the juggler Lacaze

requested permission to construct a cabinet de curiosite to provide entertainment –

harlequinades, pantomimes, and puppet shows (namely marionettes imported

from Italy) – for families strolling along the Champs-Elysees, the prefect was

only prepared to grant a limited and provisionary license. The authorities

declared that the Champs-Elysees was already cluttered with constructions and

they would not risk turning that beautiful promenade into ‘a bazaar rather than

a place of pleasure’.2

The year 1848 brought liberty even to the cultural market, including

the theater system, censorship and its commercial organization. Despite the

renewed attention of the authorities because of the theater’s prominent role

during the revolution, in the 1850s requests to open new halls increased, in

particular in the expanding commercial and entertainment neighborhoods.

Thus Florimond Ronger, also known as Herve, who at the time was the

orchestra director at the Palais Royal and the Odeon, obtained permission to

open the Folies-Nouvelles that offered pantomime and dialogue set to music

for one or two characters. He had already proposed something similar with his

musical farce Don Quichotte e Sancho Panza, which had enthralled the public in

Paris and was soon to entertain visitors to the Great Exposition.

When Offenbach obtained permission to open the Bouffes Parisiens –

named in honor of the Italian comic opera – on the Champs Elysees the

following year, the police prefecture again specified in detail the type of

performance that would be allowed: pantomimes with at most five performers,

one-act comic musical dialogues for two to three actors, and dance routines

with no more than five dancers; choruses were strictly forbidden (see Yon

2002: 581). These well-defined rules and limitations obviously influenced the

development of what would soon come to be defined as ‘operetta’: a small,

unpretentious operatic work that had no tragic implications and was designed

to entertain the public.3 Operetta first took the form of single acts in which two

or at most three performers parodied in musical form current events easily

The origins of the entertainment industry

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understood by the public. Among the most famous of these operettas was the

one-act Les Deux aveugles, a comic duet by fraudulent beggars whose bolero in

the form of a waltz became an immediate success, danced dizzily in the nearby

Jardin d’hiver.

I will pass over the operetta’s immediate, clamorous and – judging by the

reactions of those involved – almost unexpected success, pausing only to note

Siegfried Kracauer’s fascinating description of Offenbach and the Paris of

the Second Empire, when everything seemed to add to the interest and

anticipation:

It was all the rage, even the little theater itself, which was compared to a

kiosk or box of bonbons. The rows of seats rose so steeply that a humorous

newspaper portrayed the hall as a ladder with the audience perched on it.

The ring of upper-tier boxes at the top seemed like doll houses.4

Even the location was strategic, near the Exhibition’s new industry pavilion,

which drew many admiring visitors. Apart from the quaint descriptions and

anecdotes related to this event, it is interesting that the operetta was already

described as something different from the Opera Comique repertory, which,

according to Offenbach, at that point consisted of ‘petits grands-operas’ that

had nothing in common with the original comic operas.

The dynamic Offenbach left out no detail when it came to defining the new

genre, including the idea of a competition to legitimize and individualize its

main concepts. The idea worked and the composition of an operetta by a

musician who was French or a long-time resident in 1856 was a great success.

The two winners were George Bizet and Charles Lecocq, both of whom went

on to have long and successful careers.

Some illustrious individuals were on the jury: recognized masters such as the

composer Charles Gounod; Francois Auber, who composed Fra Diavolo and

became one of the central reference points for the genre’s comic vein;

Fromenthal Halevy, the celebrated author of La Juive; and Eugene Scribe, the

most famous comic playwright and librettist of the day. Their reputations

guaranteed the musical and dramatic dignity of the new genre, which

nevertheless was the object of lively polemics among experts who regarded it as

an unacceptable ‘vulgarization’ of the operatic form.

Given this extraordinary beginning, it is not surprising that the Bouffes

quickly replaced their architecturally insubstantial summer venue on the

Champs Elysees with a proper winter venue in the luxurious and comfortable

Passage Choiseul, one of the numerous passages being built in the new

fashionable commercial areas. The new concert hall, whose decoration and

costumes recalled those of the Opera, thus marked the beginning of an

unprecedentedly close connection between the theaters and the new com-

mercial areas that unequivocally demonstrated the commercial role of the

performances.5

Musical identity and social change in Italy

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Meanwhile, the limitations regarding the chorus and number of perfor-

mers and acts were gradually lifted. As a result, works with more complex

dramatic structures began to be staged: for example, Tromb’al Cazar ou Les

criminels dramatiques (1856), a satire of a Hugo-style historical drama with four

characters; Mesdames de la Halle (1858) with a ‘fruit vendor’s waltz’ that

rendered musically the confused hubbub of a Sunday morning market square

and became immensely popular; and Orphee aux enfers (October 1858),

which, despite a disappointing opening and the violent accusations provoked

by his slanderous attacks of classicism, was an enormous international success

and became the first repertory operetta and was staged hundreds of times, in

Europe and beyond.6

In the space of a few years the new genre quickly acquired a reputation

for offering light music for public entertainment and established its own

performance spaces, a varied and devoted public, and even its own, rapidly

expanding repertoire despite its decidedly ephemeral character. More acces-

sible and popular than opera, operetta catered to a growing need in cultural

consumption.

Offenbach also began to systematically exportation of the operetta. In 1861

he was in Vienna for the staging of some of his recent works at the Carltheater.

His success paved the way for a new, completely autonomous stage for operetta

in Vienna, which soon became the center for the diffusion of the new genre

throughout Europe.7 In fact, a musical and dramatic variant would emerge in

Austria by the end of the century that through the works of Suppe, Strauss, and

Lehar, eventually undermined the French model and became the most popular

expression of cultural nationalization in Austria.

In the 1860s the first of Offenbach’s operettas arrived in Brussels, London

and Berlin, and soon after in the United States, where Offenbach personally

accompanied his repertoire in 1875. While there, he kept ‘a diary of American

oddities’ of restaurants, streets and theaters. ‘Unlike in Europe’ – he writes with

astonishment – ‘in this country what counts in the theater is the parterre, not

the few occupants of the boxes, which usually remain empty in spite of the

hierarchical principle of Italian-style theater, which functions poorly here.’8

Genealogies

Musicologists have paid little attention to the operetta, although they have

addressed a question that is difficult to resolve: Where did the operetta come

from? What were its precedents? From what musical and dramatic traditions did

it develop in the second half of the nineteenth century? Unraveling its genealogy

is a particularly complex task, but also a contentious one, because the choice of

different ancestries – from the high tradition of opera buffa in the 1700s to the

much lower vaudeville – is closely linked to equally varying value judgments.

Furthermore, the operetta’s early success outside of France, above all in Austria,

but also in Italy, England, Spain, and the USA, caused it to become intertwined


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with many other musical and theatrical traditions, such as the German singspiel

and the Italian salon aria, all of which makes the identification of common

ancestry difficult. Yet it is the original question that should be challenged,

because it ends up repeating the same polemics without providing any

explanation:9 was the operetta minor, low, popular and commercial genre, or a

revival of the comic opera which seemed to have lost its shine after Rossini?

The historical evidence suggests that the new genre clearly is born from the

transformation and adaptation of one or more existing genres, which came

together to produce the new. It is the mix itself, rather than the single in-

gredients, which needs to be studied to understand how different ideas flow

together to produce an original, autonomous result that responds to the current

needs of society and culture. Working on a different musical form and historic

period, Marco Santoro has shown how the socio-genetic reconstruction of a

new genre can elucidate a wider process of cultural transformation (see Santoro

2002) – provided that one grasps its historicity and dynamism, identifying both

the conflicts and communication among old and new genres.10

The opera is without a doubt the operetta’s source of musical and dramatic

architecture. Offenbach did not fail to emphasize his homage to Rossini and

Mozart, while later on in London, Gilbert and Sullivan made explicit their debt

to Donizetti.11 But operetta’s particular mix of music and recitation also reveals

contamination from less exalted theater traditions, such as vaudeville and farce,

more spectacular traditions such as dance, and more catchy ones such as the

canzone, all genres that had undergone important developments in the first half

of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, we find in Offenbach’s and Lecocq’s

works a completely original mixing of forms such as the sung polka, the

obsessive chorus in the form of a gallop, the parody of the bel canto, and the

comic trio that imitate the Grand Opera (the so-called patriotic trio), all of

which serve to transform melodrama into laughter (Duteurtre 1987). Three

typical elements of the operetta deserve mention because they carried especially

strong social valences. The first was the central role given to dance: already in

the very first operettas the waltz, mazurka, can-can, galop (and later the fox

trot, shimmy and black bottom) were an essential part of the spectacle, that also

had important spin-offs beyond that gave rise to the fashion for new dance

outside the theater.12 Operetta music hastened and in fact sought a precise,

physical, individual and collective response in the listeners, and its waltzes

spilled immediately into the ever more numerous dance halls. This was one of

the key elements in the genre’s rapid success.

The second element was parody and drew on popular and carnival

traditions: the burlesque transformation of the heroic, noble, or elevated

elements of Italian romantic melodrama and French Grand Opera into amused

profanation. These satiric reversals drew large audiences. The third element was

licentiousness, in especially seduction of the female character.

The operetta’s original framework, like that of the opera, had a strong

cosmopolitan and transnational character, and this became one of its principal


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characteristics. On the one hand it was a genre of emigration, given that its

founders – Herve and Offenbach – were naturalized Germans, while Hortense

Schneider – its major star and queen of Parisian theater life – had German

ancestry. On the other hand, it addressed an international public, namely the

visitors to the universal Exhibitions in 1855 and in 1867. For the latter occasion

Offenbach produced a series of pieces that his biographers call the ‘tetralogy of

the Grand Exhibition’ (Faris 1980: 146ff) including the great fresco La vie

parisienne. Strauss took advantage of the Paris Expo as well, where for the first

time he publicly presented his Bel Danubio blu, which became a key symbol of

Viennese identity (see Crittenden 2000: 31). The operetta’s strong ties to the

Expo, where it was the most brilliant and innovative theatrical expression,

probably contributed to its immediate and phenomenal success beyond its

original context. It also pointed to the supranational character of the

transformation process underpinning it: an expansion without precedent, in

terms of activities and proposals, of the entertainment market in all western

countries.13

In the Italian piazzas

In Italy, the Freres Gregoire, a French company, arrived in Parma on

2 October 1866 on their first Italian tour. They obtained permission to erect a

mobile, wood and canvas theater in Piazza Grande, where they staged a

somewhat downscaled version of La belle Helene. They had done likewise in

numerous other cities, at times making do with an open field when not allowed

space in the piazza (see Nello Vetro 1995: 13). In Florence the following year

they set up their theater in Piazza Manin and presented the so-called ‘Paris

evenings’ and the ‘buffooneries’ of Offenbach.14

This first landing of the operetta in Italy was far less sophisticated and

cosmopolitan than versions discussed above; they were more like shows or

acrobatic performances at fairs. As these first stagings amply demonstrate, the

entire history of the Italian version of operetta was marked from the start by a

greater element of clownishness and a comic, bawdy tone that signaled its

distance from the lyric opera, the Italian genre par excellence. However, the

improvised character of these performances was soon altered, as a result of

substantial adjustments in theater spaces throughout the peninsula in response

to post-unification society’s new desire for spectacle. Starting in the 1870s, halls

expressly dedicated to spettacoli d’arte varia (variety shows) hosted French

companies on tour. The number of such spaces increased in Italian cities large

and small, thanks to the expanded construction and production activities

of theater entrepreneurs. Similar growth was occurring in other European

cities; from the boulevard theaters in France to the music halls in England

and the Vorstadt theaters in Austria, commercial theater spaces were provid-

ing entertainment to the people living in the outskirts and developing

neighborhoods.15


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Yet the Italian politeama evoked a familiar aspect of the country’s theatrical

panorama. As the name implies, the politeama revived the eclectic culture of

spectacle and the concept of the theater-monument prevalent at the end of the

1700s, when hundreds of urban theaters were built throughout Italy, becoming

the pride of their communities and the base for the widespread diffusion of the

romantic melodrama. These evoked in turn the memory of earlier, Baroque

theaters. As there were no public controls regarding the type of performances

that could be staged, the situation was quite different in France and even in

England, where well into the 1800s a sharp distinction was made between

theaters that could or could not stage dramas.16 These urban theaters, which

constituted the fundamental framework of the Italian theater system, thus were

able to offer widely varied programs ranging from opera to ballet, comedy,

optical illusions, and pyrotechnical performances, and aimed at a heterogeneous

public of aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and commoners.17 In Italy the definition of

genres and their hierarchical classification owed very little to the intervention

and requirements of public authorities.

During the second half of the 1800s, however, the audience base grew

progressively more bourgeois, a shift that was reflected in theater structure and

decor. Furthermore, important theaters gradually began programming exclu-

sively high genres, primarily opera, followed increasingly by dramas and even

comedies, but not ones that aimed at the popular market. At the center of this

change was the establishment of repertoire opera, a complex and prolonged

transformation that marked a very significant turning point for the develop-

ment and production of opera. Yet the gradual transformation of musical

melodrama from short-lived consumption to artistic music did not always

proceed in a linear fashion. In Milan, the undisputed capital of the theater

world, as well as throughout the peninsula, the popular, post-unification

variety shows that ushered in the world of Vaudeville began to have their own

theaters, either constructed ex novo or renovated by small but enterprising

theater companies.

Here are a few synchronic examples. In 1869 the brothers Giacomo and

Giovanni Chiarella petitioned the city of Genoa for a well-situated piece of

land in the heart of a new neighborhood. The land had previously been

occupied by a matinee theater, the Teatro dell’Acquasola. Having obtained the

land for free, the Chiarella brothers constructed the new Genovese Politeama, a

multi-purpose hall with seating for at least 2000 that was able to stage all types

of performances. In May of 1870 it was ostentatiously inaugurated with a

performance of the very popular I Promesi sposi by Petrella and a libretto by

Antonio Ghislanzoni, which had made its debut a few months earlier at the

Teatro Sociale di Lecco. The inauguration was followed by a particularly

colorful offering of opera, operetta, plays and variety shows, thus reviving the

practice of alternating genres of traditional city theaters (see Brocca 1895). The

programming from 1870 to 1895 provides some revealing statistics: while 102

lyric operas were staged, for a total of 1,981 performances, the number of


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operettas and vaudeville shows was greater (176), even if the total number of

performances, given their more volatile nature, was less (1,594). Yet the 83

performances of La figlia di Madame Angot by Lehar and the 81 of Boccaccio by

Suppe equaled or surpassed those of Verdi’s Il Trovatore or Rigoletto. Finally,

there were 80 dance shows, for a total of 1,203 performances, testifying to the

continued vitality or revival of the genre, and at least 955 acrobatic and

equestrian performances.18

The Chiarella brothers, a veritable dynasty of theater entrepreneurs, also

opened a Politeama bearing their name in the Valentino area of Turin, which

launched numerous Italian operettas at the beginning of the 1900s (Tamburini

1966).

In 1869, the year of the Genoa inauguration, the Teatro Politeama Reinach

opened an iron structure quite daring for its day in Parma (Alcari 1921). This

theater also offered a mixed program, in which opera alternated with variety

shows, operettas and gymnasts in a potpourri analogous to that of many other

politeamas opening throughout the country. These included the Pisan

Politeama, which opened in 1864 outside customs boundaries and had a

seating capacity of 2,700; the Politeama Rossetti in Trieste; the Umberto I in

Bari; and the Politeama Garibaldi in Palermo. Whether built of wood and stone

or iron and glass, the theaters were often constructed and dismantled rather

quickly, making these large but insubstantial halls particularly representative of

theater life of the period and its significant commercial thrust. Construction

was especially intense in the last decades of the century: the general list of

Italian theaters published in 1907 mentioned 85 such halls, that were broadly

distributed geographically and included many smaller cities such as Casale

Monferrato in Piedmont and Castel San Pietro near Bologna.19 These theaters

ranged from permanent buildings to simple ‘baracconi’ such as the summer

theater built by the local entrepreneur Giacomo Sbisa in Bari in June 1895,

which staged a very full run of operettas. The endeavor was successful, and a

year later the first construction was replaced by a more solid one, suited for the

winter season, just behind the Chamber of Commerce.20

This new system of theaters, run by a new generation of entrepreneurs,

expanded rapidly throughout provincial Italy. However, the most important of

the new operettas, revues, and variety shows were launched in major cities, in

theaters that served as workshops for new offerings: the Teatro Fossati and the

Dal Verme in Milan; the Eliseo, Nazionale and Costanzi in Rome; the Vittorio

Emanuele and the Chiarella in Torino; the Giacosa and the Mercadante in

Naples. Beginning in the 1890s, the politeama circuit was flanked by another

Parisian import: the cabaret. This was a sort of half cafe and half theater, where

one was allowed to smoke, eat, and move about during the show. In addition

to selections from operettas, arias and new songs were all the rage.21 The first of

these was opened in Naples by Giuseppe Marino and Eduardo Caprioli, two

entrepreneurs who were particularly sensitive to novelties from France.

Immediately after the opening of the Galleria Umberto I, in itself a typical


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imitation of the Parisian passage, they decided to open the Salone Margherita.

This started a new wave of expansion that was copied in nearly all the cities of

turn-of-the-century Italy, where cabarets were given exotic names such as

Eden, Eldorado, Kursaal, or Italian dynastic names such as the Umberto and the

Salone Margherita (of which the Marino brothers soon opened a Roman

branch).22 Naples, the cradle of Italian opera buffa, now became the most fertile

terrain for new forms of light cultural entertainment; for instance, Francesco

Mastriani’s publication of the popular feuilleton as well as the baptism of Italian

operetta later on (see Colombo 1998).

What is known about the public? Only minor literary and journalistic

references remain, and they were often colored by the moralistic campaign

directed against the decline of traditional theater and the role played by the new

products.23

The image that most vividly emerges from these journalistic accounts is that of

crowded theaters, jam-packed, ‘not a seat empty’,24 with a notable female

presence. For the rest, the theater reports described an audience that seemed to

oscillate between two very different ideas. On the one hand, ‘grocers and

delicatessen owners’ who ‘say they feel the need for it when they close their

shops’ – this was according to the Gazzetta Musicale di Milano which was, owned

by Ricordi, who, as we shall see, had an interest in disparaging the phenomenon

(‘Rivista Milanese’ 1883). On the other hand, it was described as a rather

sophisticated and cultured public, who did not disdain the new frenzy for variety,

above all in the early years. An 1866 report states: ‘These past evenings, boxes cost

a fortune and you were lucky to get one. Many men and women for whom the

Teatro Fossati seems an unacceptable hovel considered themselves fortunate to be

able to crouch in one of those boxes’ (La Perseveranza, 24 December 1866).

Clearly a ‘class’ reading, in which the adjective ‘popular’ is understood in a

well-defined social sense, is inadequate and ineffective in explaining the

complex transformation that the world of theater underwent in the last decades

of the century.

Spettacoli d’arte varia (variety shows)

One fact is immediately evident: new forms of theatrical space multiplied as

rapidly as the types of performance. At this point the spettacolo d’arte varia was a

changing and varied sector, comprised substantially of works of French origin

such as operetta, revue, variety, fantasy, and vaudeville, rather than the blend of

magicians and acrobatics found at fairs and that still alternated with the opera in

urban theaters during the first half of the century. More traditionally Italian

forms of entertainment, such as the aria and canzone, which originated in the

cabaret and dialect comic theater, were interwoven with the French genres

and attracted a growing commercial support.25 An analysis of programs of

second-tier theaters, which in the 1870s were first, however, in proposing

‘light’ novelties – for example, the Rossetti in Trieste or the Gerbino in


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Turin – reveals that all forms mentioned above were intertwined with the

operetta, which in turn was originally based on the more complex musical and

dramatic operatic structure. In Italy, productions by Offenbach and Herve

formed part of a melange of comic-musical offerings difficult to decipher today.

In reality, there were still intricate blends of musical and theatrical forms, in

particular the imports that imitated what was happening in European

metropolises, albeit with pronounced national specifications.26 Uniting these

various forms was achieved first and foremost through the simultaneous use of

music, drama and dance, followed by an urgent rhythm said to resemble the

movement of a train,27 and finally by a precise and openly declared aim to

divert and entertain. Many critics and experts regarded these performances and

the negative consequences for the world of theater with increasing concern and

fear, and their rapid and tumultuous success exacerbated the profound

perception of crisis that pervaded the debate about theater at the time.

Among the major novelties of this period was ‘variety’, a spectacle devoid of

a proper underlying theme, in which short musical, comic, and dramatic pieces

alternated with saucy and dizzying dance routines and feats of skill and agility.28

The review was equally as popular, and during its first phase in Italy it often

utilized dialect (for example, Milanese with Cletto Arrighi,29 Tuscan with

Augusto Novelli (Acerboni 1998), Roman with Giovanni Mascetti30).

In the same years in which the Freres Gregoire presented their version of

Offenbach ‘in small doses’ in piazzas throughout Italy, other performances were

also meeting with great success. For example, Se sa Minga, a revue in Milanese

dialect, at the Teatro Fossati in Milan, was described in the press as the ‘first of

the Parisian genre in Italy’ and its premiere was subtitled A whimsical urban-

political revue (Sanguinetti 1971: 23). According to the columnist for Perseveranza,

it was neither comedy, farce nor vaudeville. Rather, it was a ‘stage compilation’

in which the year’s major events were presented in allegorical form, alternating

with recitation, dance, and song. ‘It is a bizarre genre popular in Paris, where at

the end of the year every theater offers their comic-satirical revue’ (La

Perseveranza, 10 December 1866). It was quite the event in Milanese theater life,

and the Teatro Fossati attracted very broad audiences for an unhoped-for

number of performances. The composer Carlo Gomez produced another major

success a few years later, the triumphal dance opera Guarany that broke box

office records in 1870.31 Light entertainment that parodied reality was

undoubtedly a growing and contagious phenomenon, for that year the Teatro

Milanese’s Christmas program of 23 December included the revue show Ghe n’e

par tucc. Collaborating on the text were prominent figures such as the critic

Filippo Filippi, the journalist Luigi Perelli, and the publisher Giulio Ricordi,

who years later composed operettas under the pseudonym Burgmein. These are

the first examples of light theater, which became explosively popular in the

following two decades and also lead to the success of the ‘little opera’.

Meanwhile, the entire organization of urban theater life, even the forms of

communication it used, was changing in order to adjust to wider and more


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intense use. Newspapers published the playbills of the major theaters and listed

the evening’s performances; in December 1869 the directors of the Milan

theaters agreed to post a communal notice of the day’s performances, which

could be consulted by passers by. Furthermore, in Paris as in Milan, the 1881

and 1906 national Expositions led to the development of new marketing

strategies for theater spectacles, which cultural and theater entrepreneurs took

advantage of.32

Theaters became more successful in publicizing their activities, but they also

used publicity to increase their earnings. From Milan to Bari politeamas began

placing advertisements for commercial products on their curtains, a move

which sparked outrage in many who considered it a mortal blow to theatrical

illusion (see Giovine 1969: 6). Teatro Illustrato carried the following report

about the Teatro Dal Verme in July 1883:

As soon as the intermission begins, you are made to fall from the sky into the

most barren materiality because of the harlequinesque curtain that blocks

your view of the actors who had just been making your heart palpitate.

Norma’s desperate cry is brutally followed by Singer sewing machines for

three lire a week, and Manrico’s passion by elastic beds from X factory . . . .

(Valle 1883)

Translations and Francophobia

During the 1870s the French operetta became a fixed feature in Italian theaters,

just as the productions of Meyerbeer and Auber had been in the preceding two

decades. This occurred thanks to some entrepreneur-translators who intuited

the operetta’s commercial potential once it was Italianized. After all, how was it

possible to propose a work in a foreign language to a public who wanted to

enjoy itself?33

One of the protagonists of this process of naturalization was Antonio

Scalvini, a theater company director, author of novels, comedies, opera

librettos and fairy tales, and above all a skilled reviser of texts, who knew how

to make them appealing to the public. He clearly had a lively imagination, as is

evident from his numerous experiments over the years in translating European

ideas into Italian scenes: for example, the musical transposition of Gozzi’s fairy

tales L’Augellin belverde and Le tre melarance, and the revival of early comic opera

with the Barbiere di Siviglia by Paisiello. His company were responsible for

introducing the revue in Milan, and for presenting the first Italian translations

of Offenbach’s and Lecocq’s operettas, which began touring Italian theaters in

the 1873 – 4 season, when the French versions were still in circulation.

Scalvini’s company triumphantly staged the Bella Elena at the Genovese

Politeama in 1873. It was performed by the same artists who, on other

evenings, performed comedy and vaudeville – in other words by ‘singing

actors’ rather than acting singers. For the occasion the theater installed a


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counter – just like in the grand theaters of Paris and London – to control the

flow of the public in the hall (Brocca 1895: 17).

Despite the absence of librettos, we can gather some information about the

translations from the programs themselves. There were significant variations

with respect to the original texts in terms of the number of acts and characters

(and at times even their names), as well as presumed changes in the musical

structure given that they were put on by actors rather than singers.

Entrepreneurs and theater directors took great liberties in bringing French

operettas to the Italian stage, introducing functional variants to meet the needs

of performers and public. No one was scandalized by this in Italy, where

textual variation had been and probably still was widely applied to the lyric

opera, in particular in provincial theaters (albeit less so after Verdi’s battle for

authorial control). Only years later did playbills for operettas begin including

reference to the presumed fidelity to the original texts. An announcement in

an 1888 playbill in Livorno indicates that such fidelity was not the norm: the

Roman company Tani presented l’Orfeo all’inferno, the most widely performed

of Offenbach’s works, ‘in the manner in which it is done in Paris’, namely ‘in

four acts, ten scenes, with original dance tunes and lavish costumes and

scenery’.34

Nevertheless, critical reports indicated that the final results were frequently

different, musically weaker, and on the whole more tiresome than their French

counterparts. The testimony of an exceptional spectator, Friedrich Nietzsche, a

regular at cabarets and theaters in Nice and Turin, provides confirmation.35

After attending a performance of the Mascotte by Edmond Audran at the

Carignano in Turin in 1888, the philosopher wrote that he perceived a clear

expression of the French levity, of that ‘science of the finesses of taste and

effects’ missing, in his opinion, in the Teutonic heaviness, but this was also was

lacking in the Italian taste:

The moral: not Italy, my old friend! Here, where I have the first Italian

operetta company, I nevertheless have to be satisfied with every gesture of

the pretty – at times too pretty – little women, who make a caricature out of

every operetta. The fact is that they have no esprit in their little legs – and

even less in their little heads . . . . In Italy, Offenbach seems to me as obscure

(by which I mean of a base vulgarity) as in Lipsia.

While perhaps lacking the French levity and at times heavily manipulated to

include double entendres for the Italian public, French operettas nevertheless

become more prevalent, and developed their own companies and circuits. In

1897 the theater guides listed 19 Italian operetta companies; 10 years later there

were at least 37, in addition to the permanent one created at the Teatro Dal

Verme by the Suvini and Zerboni Company, the new and undisputed

theatrical protagonists in Milan. In 1901 the first cooperative league of

operetta artists appeared in Genoa (Dalmas 1907: 67). By this point the major


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companies, including those of Giulio Marchetti, Luigi Maresca, and Carlo

Lombardo offered smooth staging, greater elegance, and splendid costumes,

often by the designer Luigi Sapelli, who earned international renown under the

pseudonym Caramba.

This productive crescendo continued to find much resistance in the Italian

theater world, however. The ‘little opera’ seemed a vulgarization of traditional

opera, and was often described by specialists as a torrent rushing through the

country and sweeping away everything in its path, opera first of all. Faced with

the proliferation and growing popularity of new musical theater shows, the

opera world felt threatened and under siege.36 There were insistent appeals to

solid musical nationalism as opposed to the operetta and the ‘foreignization of

the repertoires’ through French and German opera (Conati 1991). Operetta felt

the brunt of the strong anti-French mood in Italian political and cultural life

during the second half of the 1880s, when the nationalistic glare swept the

stage, provoking unrest and whistles against any Francophone allusion (even if

simply a matter of dancers being dressed ‘in French style’, as occurred at the

Genovese politeama in 1888). Such polemics appeared above all in specialized

journals, where the argument was strongly linked to the economic interests of

the publishing houses with the most at stake, namely Ricordi and Sonzogno,

and therefore became inflated proportionally.

In addition to the new generation of theater entrepreneurs that we have

already mentioned, the publishing house Sonzogno played a decisive role in the

affirmation of the Italian operetta. Sonzogno arrived late on the musical scene

but with much determination. Following initiatives already begun by Ricordi,

in 1874 Sonzogno launched the series La musica per tutti, arrangements for piano

of famous and lesser-known operas. Showing particular sensitivity to the new

popular target, in the same year Sonzogno distinguished itself from Ricordi by

including in its decidedly Francophile music selection the major works of

Offenbach, Herve, and Lecocq; it acquired publication and performance rights,

and began systematic importation (see Capra 1995). At the same time, Edoardo

Sonzogno decided to become an impresario, organizing the Lent and spring

season of the Teatro Santa Radegonda in Milan around operettas and opera-

comiques. He consolidated this new branch of activity in the years following,

with the staging of opera and operetta seasons at the Dal Verme, Carcano, and

Manzoni, as well as in Roman and Neapolitan theaters, and culminating in the

opening of his own theater in Milan in 1894, the old Canobbiana, which he

renamed the Teatro Lirico Internazionale. To appreciate the importance of the

operetta for Sonzogno, it is sufficient to consider his first catalogue of musical

publications in 1887, which includes a list of 152 ‘exclusive rights to theatrical

operas for all of Italy’. Although Bizet and later Berlioz were included,

Offenbach is the most fully represented, with 51 titles, followed by Lecocq

with 13 (Capra 1995). Thus it is not surprising that Gazzetta musicale di Milano,

Ricordi’s prestigious journal, dedicated only hostile phrases to operetta,

emphasizing the genre’s musical and moral vulgarity. As another newspaper of


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the time put it, operetta is ‘a marriage of music and can can, of bared legs and

barking throats, of jests and the ridiculous, of parody and mire’.37

Between opera and operetta: Italian production

We have seen how Italian versions of French operettas developed immediately

both their own, more comic side as well as a greater emphasis on word and

mime compared to music, thus distancing themselves from the Italian operatic

tradition, with which it was particularly difficult to compete. Strong melo-

dramatic resistance long hindered the development of an original Italian

operetta production, which, not by chance, was the latest in Europe to take off.

The first isolated examples, from the 1870s and 1880s, often took the form

of operetta – revues and had an even more pronounced popular, vaudeville-like

tone than operettas translated from French. These included works in dialect,

such as Er Marchese del Grillo by Mascetti (1889), in which the full parodistic

register is employed. Cletto Arrighi parodied Offenbach’s Grande Duchesse de

Gerolstein in El Gran duca di Gerolstein (1879); a work in Milanese vernacular, it

was a festive satire of Prussian militarism. Along the same lines were satirical

reversals of the most famous melodramas, such as Antonio Petito’s parodies of

Verdi in Neapolitan dialect (Petrini 1997: 31). Parody does not spare even

Marco Praga’s La moglie ideale, that enormously successful, end-of-century

bourgeois comedy, was soon followed by an operetta version, L’amante ideale

(La Gioia 1979: 17). All of these examples reveal a strong undergraduate spirit,

which often reflected their geographical proximity to the student world,

particularly in Milan.38

The first examples of ‘little opera’ of which Italy could boast actually came

from the Neapolitan school, and melded clear French influences with the

Neapolitan canzone tradition. They began to take shape in the 1840s, develop-

ing aspects of Rossini and Donizetti, but the repertoire was consolidated in the

1880s by Salvatore Di Giacomo (Borgna 1992: 18 – 24). The authors of these

first Italian operettas were, not by chance, actor-managers or well-known

canzone writers: Vincenzo Valente, who wrote I granatieri (1889); Carlo

Lombardo, who set to music the lyrics of Salvatore Di Giacomo; and Mario

Costa, who in 1897 wrote Histoire d’un pierrot as well as the famous ‘A Frangesa’.

Ricordi’s magazine defined them as ‘French – Italian – Neapolitan slapdash’, ‘the

culmination of digestive music’ (‘Rivista Milanese’ 1883).

The history of the Italian operetta began with these compositions. Its

significant yet late production occurred before and after World War I. By this

point in France, one spoke rather of ‘musical comedy’, and in the USA the

musical was becoming the rage. As in France 50 years earlier, the development

of operetta in Italy was accompanied and supported by institutional initiatives

such as the magazine L’opera comica (launched in 1907 with the subtitle exclusive

organ of the operetta), and above all the contest established in 1913 by Lorenzo

Sonzogno, who had broken away from the family company in order to


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specialize in light spectacle. The new Sonzongo competition, along the lines of

that launched for opera in 1883, awarded an annual prize to an operetta in three

acts written by an Italian.

What was the reason for the substantial chronological lag in the natura-

lization of a genre that would become so successful in Italy, especially in the

1920s? My hypothesis takes us back to the 1880s, when the major musical

journals began dealing with the operetta phenomenon on a more regular basis,

debating quite lucidly the dynamics that connected the traditional opera world

to the new form of spectacle. In 1884 in Musica popolare, the well-known critic

Yorick offered a sort of self-criticism; he wrote of the ‘honest hilarity’ that the

public seeks and finds in operetta, in spite of ‘all the syrupy drones of the

moralists, all the violent diatribes of the critics’, who, with their snobbish

behavior ended up contributing to the genre’s increasing success:

We committed the imprudence of excommunicating operetta in the name

of offended morality and compromised modesty. And it was like pouring

gas on the fire. For the naıve, the indifferent, and the dispassionate, the

operetta became more appealing, with all the intentions and seductions of

forbidden fruit.

(Yorick 1884)

In addition, there are numerous references to the public’s need for distraction

and desire to enjoy itself, as well as expressions of surprise that the public for

variety shows is so much greater than that for opera or plays. In the Neapolitan

journal La Musica, Tommaso Persico wrote:

See that group of people pushing, shoving and fighting in front of the ticket

office . . . . What sort of performances do they put on to draw such a large

crowd? Certainly not a play by Shakespeare, not an opera by Mozart,

Rossini, or Wagner. They stage Boccaccio, Duchino, Mascotte. . . . I realize that

operettas exist because they must, they are produced because the public

wants them. I go see them often and I enjoy myself.

(Persico 1884)

Persico’s analysis, significantly entitled Sterilita, also attempts to explain the

operetta phenomenon by connecting it to the crisis of traditional operatic

production.

The illness that is afflicting our musical theater is lack of novelty. No one

would have predicted this forty years ago, when there was one musical score

after another . . . and the spectators of one city were not satisfied with

the novelties of another, but wanted operas written expressly for them.

This too was a symptom of jealousy, as it were, of love for one’s home

town, but what times they were, what good fortune for everyone.


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The impresarios and singers ate it up. All the Public thought about was

having a good time, and after a lavish meal and a pleasant stroll, going to

hear Rubini’s cabaletta or Persiani’s trills was the perfect thing. And the next

day they would wear out the paving stones of Toledo Road looking for a

friend with whom to talk.

Here as in other reports, what is being mourned is the world of opera before

the definitive establishment of the repertoire. Persico ultimately argues that the

opera used to do what the operetta was now doing: provide constant novelty

and guaranteed entertainment to the urban and provincial Italian public.

Furthermore, the evening at the opera also included dance numbers, in which

the dancers were scantily dressed, as in variety shows. As Egisto Roggero wrote

in Teatro illustrato in 1886:

If our grandparents made do with the more rigorous morality of the comic

opera, if they were enraptured by the tirades and the same old situations of

those librettos that they knew practically by heart, at least afterwards they

had the dance numbers, with dancers in low necklines, very short skirts, and

sexy tops that emphasized their curves. And after an hour or so of that

explosion of well-turned and provocative legs, shoulders, and arms, they felt

well recompensed for the austerity of the comic operas.39

Is the dancing in operetta actually a revival of the entr’acte dance that had

gradually dropped out of theater performances? The real problem, Roggero

continues, was that everything that had constituted the glory of the Italian

melodrama, from its melody to its agility, embellishment, and symmetrical

repetitions were banished by modern opera, in which ‘the poor public . . . finds

little of amusement, and feels tortured by music it does not understand and is as

abstruse as the most sublime, mathematical theorems are for most people.’

According to this hypothesis, the reasons for the popularity of the variety show

and the operetta were to be found in the recent development of opera itself, in

its losing its close communication with the public that had been the key to

Verdi’s success (see Sorba 2006).

It was increasingly evident that there were profound changes in the

relationship between the opera and its public, and that opera was rapidly

transforming into artistic music no longer suited to immediate and popular

consumption.40 Naturally, there were also negative evaluations of this change.

Vittorio Bersezio, for example, whose comedies had enjoyed considerable

popular success, nevertheless was positively scathing towards that shapeless and

ignorant mass that was the public. According to him, the saying ‘the public is

always right’ was false, as was every form of adulation because in truth, ‘the

public has no taste: the public is that inert mass of which I have said: they are

pulled in this direction and that by the audacity of those few who know and

understand nothing . . . but they have the great merit of will and initiative’


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(Bersezio 1881). The theater public was thus progressively assimilated – a

process which would continue throughout the 1890s – with that unaware and

dangerous crowd, about which Italian and French intellectuals were beginning

to reflect.41 The specialists’ attitude toward the public became radically

bifurcated: disdain on the one side, subjection on the other.

At the turn of the century, as the distinction between artistic and enter-

tainment music was being consolidated, not only did the melodramatic resis-

tances that had accompanied the Italian importation of operetta disappear, but a

sort of passing of the baton occurred between the two genres, which made

possible the large-scale production of Italian operettas. It was now the operetta,

the Italian and Viennese forms having clearly outclassed the French in terms of

staging and orchestra repertoires, which guaranteed novelty and amusement to

the socially and culturally diverse public that filled the theaters and politeamas

throughout the country. Artistic shrines such as Toscanini’s La Scala were

instead increasingly engaged in the gradual sacralization of the operatic form as

high culture not accessible to all.

This passing of the baton is outlined in the following passage, which

appeared in the new magazine L’Opera comica in 1908:

There have never been good operetta writers in Italy, nor will there ever be!

This is the categorical affirmation that has come from the pens of most if not

all of our theater critics, that has passed to the lips of naıve people, fossilizing

itself in the conviction of the actor-managers of our operetta companies.

Poor Italian maestri! . . . Whoever seriously claims that Italy lacks the spirit

for the genre must not know that comic opera was born and died in Italy,

with very rare and ugly examples abroad; and that in the end the vitality of

the operetta maestro is nothing but hogwash. Humor in music? Please! Let’s

not say such foolish things! The vitality instead must infallibly be found in

the librettist, in choosing comical subjects and situations, and in the artist

who must do much more than appears obvious to create the character

ad hoc. The musician must do nothing other than be brief, sprightly,

original, and melodic, all of which are also gifts of the lyric opera maestro.

(De Cecco 1908)

I would add that these are the very gifts that Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi

insisted on in their correspondence with their librettists.

Notes

1 An interesting problem, which has not been sufficiently analyzed, despite recentinterest in the situation in France, is the relationship between the state’s prolongedand consistent tutelage of theater, which was unparalleled in other countries, and thedevelopment, centered in Paris, of an entertainment industry in the second half ofthe 1800s. See for example Hemmings (1993) and Guardenti (2000).

2 Yon (2002) brilliantly reconstructs the story based on Bureau des Theatres files.


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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 thatthe term has a long history: it was coined disparagingly by Mozart for ‘certaindramatic abortions, those miniature compositions in which one finds only cold songsand couplets from vaudeville.’

4 Quoted from the Italian edition of Kracauer (1984: 128 – 9); the test was publishedin Amsterdam in 1937.

5 This was particularly pronounced in Paris and in London’s West End, wherecommerce and spectacle were closely intertwined. See Rappaport (2000).

6 For the sequence of productions, see the Dizionario della musica e dei musicisti, 1984:417, as well as the synthesis in Traubner (1983).

7 A good analysis of Viennese operetta as genre and cultural practice, the expression ofa sort of golden age of the Austrian capital, is found in Crittenden (2000). On Straussas a cultural totem, see also Csaki (1998).

8 See Offenbach (1979). On the arrival of the operetta in America and its role in thedevelopment of American musical theater, see Root (1981).

9 The marginalization, or rather historicalization, of an evaluative perspective of thistype is one of the elements that most distinguish a social-cultural historical approachfrom a historiographies one; see Herbert (2003). Also see the considerations ofPorrier (2004: 300 – 9) in his recent synthesis.

10 See Santoro (2002: 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) asks: ‘How much Offenbach does one hear inGounod or Ravel; and how much of Gilbert and Sullivan was interiorized byBritten?’

12 An early analysis of the Italian situation is found in Tonelli (1998: 19 – 53).13 For the situation in England, see Bayley (1986). Bayley situates the boom of these

halls for popular entertainment in the 1860s and 1870s and their transformation inmore luxurious variety theaters during the 1890s. See also the more recent Bayley(2001) and Horrall (2001).

14 This is the argument of Croccolo (1986: 9).15 On the emergence of a commercial leisure culture in eastern Europe, see

McReynolds (2003).16 On the controversy between the so-called legitimate theaters with royal licenses

and the minor or illegitimate theaters in ninteenth-century England, see Moody(2000).

17 On the social structure and programming of urban theaters in the early 1800s, seeSorba (2001).

18 For the list of operas and operettas staged and the number of performances, seeBrocca (1895: 238 – 47).

19 For the list of theaters, see Dalmas (1907).20 See the account of Giovine (1969).21 On the origins of the Italian cabaret, see Petrini (1997: 41ff.) and De Matteis (1980:

13 – 32). See also the entry ‘Caffe-concerto’ in Dizionario della musica, vol. 1 (1984:430 – 1) and De Angelis (1946).

22 In Naples in 1907 the journals Cafe Chantant and Eldorado were published, both withthe subtitle riviste dei cafe concerti, see Dalmas (1907).

23 This was nothing compared to the campaign against music halls being waged inEngland, see Hober (1986).

24 A ditty printed in a paper in Lucca in 1891 and cited by Croccolo (1986: 76) reads asfollows: ‘Run, readers, run, There’s Operetta at the Pantera: You’ll have a splendidevening Among the swarms of people.’

25 See Sanvitale (2002) and on the musical market of those years Stazio (1991).


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26 In truth the French operetta often blended with similar genres; for example,Florimond Herve’s works were at times defined as vaudeville-operetta, parody-operetta, pastoral-operetta, buffoonery-operetta, follies-operetta, revue-operetta,etc.

27 Speaking of Offenbach Albert Wolff states: ‘the devil is in his music, as it is in thisentire century, which is going full steam: it is the music of the diabolical movementof our time’ cited in Bortolotto 1971: 425.

28 A very early description of the new genre can be found in Morosi (1901); see alsoRamo (1956).

29 Augusto Novelli was the promoter of a Florentine theater revival and author ofnumerous comedies, including Acqua cheta, which also became an operetta.

30 Giovanni Mascetti, the ‘Verdi of Roman music’ went from being a clarinetist withthe Rome Municipal Band to orchestra director and impresario, as well as composerof songs and operettas in the 1890s; see Sessa (2003: 308 – 9).

31 In this case as well, even though it was not a grand opera in French style, andcertainly not a variety show, there were explicit allusions to reality in the verypopular canzone ‘Fucile ad ago,’ inspired by the battle of Sadowa; see the entry for‘Gomes, Antonio Carlos,’ Sessa (2003: 240 – 1).

32 This point is made by Colombo (1998: 84 – 7).33 It is important to remember that the tradition of performing lyric opera in the local

language was one of the fundamental contributions to the popularization of theopera. This point is made by Levine (1988: 93).

34 Il Teatro Illustrato, n. 95, 1888: 166.35 The passage, from his correspondence with Peter Gast, is in Bortolotto (1971:

423 – 4).36 On the disorientation of the Italian theater world at the end of the century, see

Piazzoni (2004).37 This is just one example among many of polemics about the new styles from France;

‘Cronaca teatrale,’ in La provincia di Lucca, 22 November 1877, cited in Croccolo(1986: 43).

38 For the gestation of Turlupineide, the best known and imitated of these variety shows,which Renato Simoni wrote in 1908 for a university performance, see Ramo (1956:135).

39 See Roggero (1886); on the usage of dancing in Italian opera; see the analysis byHansell (1988: 258). Entracte dance had become an integral part of evenings at theopera in the mid 1700s, but its most significant moment was the first 20 years of the1800s with the grand choreographed dramas of Vigano and Gioia, and the BalloExcelsior.

40 On the transformation of the opera repertoire into artistic music, see Santoro (2004).41 For a synthesis of the problem, see Mangoni (1995).

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Documents

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