Page 216 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2021. Opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama ▪︎ Operetta between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 5
P. 216
opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
do any good to the theatre or its attendance. The gentlemen in the
cooperative have their own opinion. They figured one could pros
per only with operettas. We admit that, from a financial aspect, the
theatre is a business. But, if a business is not doing well, more work
is to be done. Therefore, more knowledge in the management, more
energy, and more authority is needed, not operettas.9
Partly due to such invectives, operettas began to slowly disappear from
the repertoire. In the first season, there were six of these, including works of
lower quality, such as K. Moor’s Mr. Professor in Hell or F. Albini’s Barefoot
Dancer. In the second season, which was the last one headed by Jeřábek, no
operettas were staged. Despite the subvention from Prague and the con-
tributions by the city and the county, the Slovak National Theatre under
Jeřábek did not manage to generate enough funds in its first three years,
unlike the theatres in the Czech Republic. Although Slovaks already con-
stituted over half of the population of the city in the 1920s, because of their
jobs they had practically no time for attending the theatre, and were not
even interested in it. Even if they were interested, going to the theatre re-
mained a distant dream for many, which few could afford. Moreover, most
left the city at the weekends and travelled home to their families.
The solution was to appoint a new director, which the Cooperative did
by inviting Oskar Nedbal, a prominent Czech composer, conductor and
entrepreneur.10 When he took up the post in 1923, he undertook to fulfil
one main task: to Slovakise the theatre to the largest possible extent, while
maintaining a multi-ethnic Bratislava audience by introducing ballets to
replace the unsuitable operettas. However, the latter did not disappear from
the repertoire completely, but, contrary to his predecessor, Nedbal select-
ed only high-quality, tried and tested works. An operetta composer him-
self, he did his best to keep this genre on the stage of the Slovak National
Theatre. From his 1923 appointment onward, he focused on staging classi-
cal operettas which were artistically fully effective and followed the con-
cept of operas, and which, consequently, required opera singers and a large
symphonic orchestra. Among the already popular work that he staged were
Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Gypsy Baron, F.R. Hervé’s Mamzelle Nitou
che, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Schubert and H. Berté’s
House of the Three Girls. Nedbal’s own works, including Polish Blood and
The Vineyard Bride, and two fashionable revue operettas, Z. Folprecht’s
9 Ivan Ballo, “O operete,” Slovenský denník 5, no. 172 (1922): 5.
10 Lajcha, Dokumenty SND 1 (1920–1938), 40–99.
214
do any good to the theatre or its attendance. The gentlemen in the
cooperative have their own opinion. They figured one could pros
per only with operettas. We admit that, from a financial aspect, the
theatre is a business. But, if a business is not doing well, more work
is to be done. Therefore, more knowledge in the management, more
energy, and more authority is needed, not operettas.9
Partly due to such invectives, operettas began to slowly disappear from
the repertoire. In the first season, there were six of these, including works of
lower quality, such as K. Moor’s Mr. Professor in Hell or F. Albini’s Barefoot
Dancer. In the second season, which was the last one headed by Jeřábek, no
operettas were staged. Despite the subvention from Prague and the con-
tributions by the city and the county, the Slovak National Theatre under
Jeřábek did not manage to generate enough funds in its first three years,
unlike the theatres in the Czech Republic. Although Slovaks already con-
stituted over half of the population of the city in the 1920s, because of their
jobs they had practically no time for attending the theatre, and were not
even interested in it. Even if they were interested, going to the theatre re-
mained a distant dream for many, which few could afford. Moreover, most
left the city at the weekends and travelled home to their families.
The solution was to appoint a new director, which the Cooperative did
by inviting Oskar Nedbal, a prominent Czech composer, conductor and
entrepreneur.10 When he took up the post in 1923, he undertook to fulfil
one main task: to Slovakise the theatre to the largest possible extent, while
maintaining a multi-ethnic Bratislava audience by introducing ballets to
replace the unsuitable operettas. However, the latter did not disappear from
the repertoire completely, but, contrary to his predecessor, Nedbal select-
ed only high-quality, tried and tested works. An operetta composer him-
self, he did his best to keep this genre on the stage of the Slovak National
Theatre. From his 1923 appointment onward, he focused on staging classi-
cal operettas which were artistically fully effective and followed the con-
cept of operas, and which, consequently, required opera singers and a large
symphonic orchestra. Among the already popular work that he staged were
Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Gypsy Baron, F.R. Hervé’s Mamzelle Nitou
che, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Schubert and H. Berté’s
House of the Three Girls. Nedbal’s own works, including Polish Blood and
The Vineyard Bride, and two fashionable revue operettas, Z. Folprecht’s
9 Ivan Ballo, “O operete,” Slovenský denník 5, no. 172 (1922): 5.
10 Lajcha, Dokumenty SND 1 (1920–1938), 40–99.
214
