Operetta Essays

Introduction. More than 2000 years ago, the ancient Greek built the first theatre and developed it until the plays of the ancient Greek becomes famous on today’s world. The origin of the Greek classical theatre was first started between 550 BC and 220 BC where the plays were first starting in Athens. Plays during the ancient Greece were produced during a festival. The festival was known as a festival of honoring one of the Greek God called Dionysus, the God of Wine and Fertility. Dionysus was the

theatres were licensed only as music halls and couldn’t perform plays without music. The comic opera is argued to be the earliest form of the musical theatre we know today. Offenbach was the best know composer of this style of musicals (known as operetta- music theatre comedy). His combinations of melodies and lyrics formed a model for music theatre to follow. This heavily influenced the work of Gilbert and

emerged during the late nineteenth century. Many of its structural elements were established by the works of “Harrigan & Hart” in America. Theatrical productions that led to the rise of the musical are as follow: • BALLAD OPERA & OPERETTA Ballad operas and operettas both share qualities found in traditional opera. Just like the opera, these genres are both sung in an operatic style. The ballad opera originated in England around the eighteenth century, and developed to become a type of comic opera

Penzance is that it was writing to make fun of grand opera conventions, family commitments, and one’s sense of duty. It also has several comedic themes interwoven in the opera itself. Because of the comedic theme, Pirates of Penzance is known as an operetta. This, by definition, means that it is a short opera that is light and humorous, and has speaking in

was very famous due to the songs. At the same time he was author of famous operettas. But Rip Van Winkle, theatre single, brought him reputation all over the world. He worked in accordance to Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow written by Washington Irving which reworked by Dion. This play consists of three acts [5, 13/08/2015]. Then Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille created the French version of this operetta under the title “Rip”. It was written like French libretto and warmly greeted

After the 1860s, and for the rest of the century, the American stage was once again flooded with foreign operettas. Some of these operas included: the opera-bouffes of Offenbach and Lecocq, the operettas of Suppé and Johann Strauss II, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. Although The Black Crook was a successful play for it’s time the first successful American-written operetta was Willard Spencer's The Little Tycoon written in 1886. All the years of  European influence on the American

Candide follows the journey of four youth as they explore a world that is very different from their utopian Westphalia. History and Evolution Candide has been imagined and reimagined over time. In 1953, the renowned playwright Lillian Hellman proposed to Leonard Bernstein that they adapt Voltaire 's Candide for the musical theater. Voltaire 's novella of 1758 satirized the fashionable philosophies of his day and, especially, the Catholic church whose Inquisition routinely tortured and killed "heretics"

mental disorder and died without having recovered from his mental illness. The other romantic composer was Johann Strauss who was an Austrian composer of dance music and operettas. Johann Strauss was born on October 25, 1825 and died on June 3, 1899. He was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. Some of Johann Strauss' most famous works include "The Blue Danube", "Kaiser-Walzer. Strauss Junior studied the violin secretly as a child with the first violinist of

directors, the book includes an extended discussion of the German "studio system," a model established above all by producer Erich Pommer at the UFA corporation, Germany 's largest and most important film company. A chapter is devoted to the impact of operetta on film as a modern form of mass entertainment. Another one re-examines the complicated nexus between Weimar cinema and Hollywood film noir. Throughout, Elsaesser draws on recent developments in film history that take into account institutional,

The musical received a grant from the Endowment to fund the project. The rap-operetta-musical is not the only theatre piece that came about thanks to grants from the NEA. Other notable works include August: Osage County and Next to Normal; all three of these works won Pulitzer prizes and were influential pieces of work in the theatre

European-influenced musical theater was recognized by audiences and critics alike through Rodgers and Hammerstein’s creation of a musical comedy. "The union of two sympathetic temperaments created the first all-American, non-Broadway musical comedy (or operetta; call it what you will) independent of Viennese comic opera or French opera-bouffe on the one hand, and forty-fourth street cliches and specifications on the other. Oklahoma! turned out to be a people's opera, unpretentious and perfectly modern,

successful partnership in the American musical theatre. OKLAHOMA!, the first Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, was also the first of a new genre, the musical play, blending Rodgers’ sophisticated style of musical comedy with Hammerstein’s innovations in operetta. OKLAHOMA! was followed by CAROUSEL (1945), ALLEGRO (1947), SOUTH PACIFIC (1949), THE KING AND I (1951), ME AND JULIET (1953), PIPE DREAM (1955), FLOWER DRUM SONG (1958) AND THE

In the seventeenth century, a mixture of sophisticated verse drama, allegorical opera, popular song, and dance, became the fashion of the Spanish court for over the next hundreds of years. This new lyric-dramatic genre of music was created in Spain by playwright/writer/poet Calderon De La Barca during Spanish Golden Age in 1657. Zarzuela, the new music theatrical genre, was capable of alternating spoken and sung scenes. People in Spain living in that era could finally enjoy a local dramatic representation

public found out about the show “showboat” that was originally based on the novel by Edna Ferber was becoming a musical, it was a show that everyone had to see. This was the first musical with a realistic plot and did not have to do with only heavy operettas that dominated Broadway (Gernard). “The characters were far more three-dimensional and realistic, and the integration of music and plot was far more skillfully maneuvered.” (Gernard). One of the controversial topics of the show was unhappy marriages

“Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics” (Victor Pinchuk). Musical theatre may not be the first thing that comes to mind when concerning American culture, however, the theater has greatly shaped America into what it is today. Portraying a story through song and dance allows for an expression of emotion that cannot be replicated. With this method of storytelling, artists have been able to integrate social and political issues in a way that makes the audience not only

Leonard Bernstein was a world renowned American pianist, conductor and composer, and music educator. On August 25th of 1918, Bernstein was born in Lawrence Massachusetts originally with the name Louis, honoring his grandmother’s wishes, but his parents preferred to call him Leonard. It was officially changed soon after his grandmother’s death. Leonard was the son of Ukrainian Jews, and his father, Sam, was initially averse to the idea of Leonard’s interest in music. Sam himself worked as a fish cleaner

Richard Rogers had composed over 900 songs and 43 Broadway musical. He also produced and directed music for television and films too. He was born in New York City on June 28, 1902. Richard had help with music, broadways, and films too. His production was in 1920 called “ Poor Little Ritz Girl”. Straight out of college he work for a director name Lew Fields. Lew Fields was an American actor, comedian, vaudeville star, theatre manger, and producer. He also best know for working with Lorenz Hart, excluding

Gustav was a English composer, arranger, and an teacher. He is best known for his orchestral suite The Planets. He composed a large number of other works across a range of genres, but no others achieved comparabe success. His compositional style was the produce of many influences, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss being most crucial early in his development. Gustav Holst was a huge influence in musical education in many English Schools. Holst was very stubbornly independent and explored in the musical

lasting friendship. Bernstein recorded his works with the Israel Philharmonic. In 1949, he conducted the world premiere of the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Bernstein wrote Candide in 1956, his first operetta. He also collaborated with Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents to produce West Side Story. When it opened in show, people unanimously raved and it later became a well-known and well-loved movie in

Imara Savage’s take on Anne Washburn’s, innovative, and imaginative, Mr Burns, a post Electric play, was an enjoyable idiosyncratic escapade produced by the State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir. The world acclaimed dark comedy performance begins with a group of survivors huddled around a campfire after an apocalyptic event has wiped out all electricity in America, to distract themselves from their seemingly despondent situation, the group begins to recount an episode from The Simpsons