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

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 consumption
• entertainment industry
• theater
• musical genre
• operetta
• audiences

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) and Guardenti (2000).

2 Yon (2002) 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: 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).

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 of a sort of golden age of the Austrian capital, is found in Crittenden (2000). On Strauss as a cultural totem, see also Csàki (1998).

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

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). Also see the considerations of Porrier (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 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: 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 in more 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, see Sorba (2001).

18 For the list of operas and operettas staged and the number of performances, see Brocca (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 ‘Caffè-concerto’ in Dizionario della musica, vol. 1 (1984: 430 – 1) and De Angelis (1946).

22 In Naples in 1907 the journals Café Chantant and Eldorado were published, both with the subtitle riviste dei café concerti, see Dalmas (1907).

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

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

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

26 In truth the French operetta often blended with similar genres; for example, Florimond Hervè'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 this entire century, which is going full steam: it is the music of the diabolical movement of our time’ cited in Bortolotto 1971: 425.

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

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

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

31 In this case as well, even though it was not a grand opéra in French style, and certainly not a variety show, there were explicit allusions to reality in the very popular 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 the opera. 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 by Hansell (1988: 258). Entracte dance had become an integral part of evenings at the opera in the mid 1700s, but its most significant moment was the first 20 years of the 1800s with the grand choreographed dramas of Viganò and Gioia, and the Ballo Excelsior.

40 On the transformation of the opera repertoire into artistic music, see Santoro (2004).

41 For a synthesis of the problem, see Mangoni (1995).