Page 338 - 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. 338
opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
The second reason, which is of course related to the first, is the short-
age of professional performers (the late beginnings of activity at the Conser
vatory in Ljubljana, which was established a mere year before the Maribor
Opera opened its doors, were covered extensively in last year’s publication).21
Given the small number of professional singers and instrumentalists work-
ing in Slovenia, the theatre’s management decision to opt for an apparently
less demanding genre such as operetta is therefore no surprise.
The third reason is one that is specific to the Maribor milieu: a Ger-
man-speaking audience that was remarkably well disposed towards oper-
etta. The presence of such an audience in Maribor undoubtedly contribut-
ed to the regular staging of operettas in the city. In the face of the numerous
changes that accompanied the transition to the new state and, consequent-
ly, a new geographical, political, economic, cultural and linguistic reality,
the audience evidently sought refuge in operetta, a genre that had been ex-
tremely popular even before the war. Operetta was unquestionably also part
of the genetic make-up of the Slovene middle classes after the First World
War. At this point it is worth pointing out that in Gorenjski slavček Slovenes
simultaneously have the first Slovene national opera and our first operetta.
Both Igor Grdina and Vladimír Karbusický identify, in the libretto and the
musical characteristics of the operetta version of G orenjski slavček staged in
1872, a clear desire to shape a national emblem.22 Or as Franz Kafka – who
loved operetta – put it in one of his last essays:23 operetta had always been
a proving ground for the realization of national tendencies. So despite the
growing popularity of talking pictures, operetta survived in Maribor right
up until the period following the Second World War, when some of the Slo-
vene apparatchiks of the day placed it on the list of undesirable elements,
as a result of which it disappeared from Slovenia’s theatre stages for sever-
al decades.
21 Jernej Weiss, ed., Konservatoriji: profesionalizacija in specializacija glasbenega dela
(Koper, Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem, Festival Ljubljana, 2019),
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-7055-86-3.
22 Igor Grdina, “Gorenjski slavček 1872,” in Začetki in dosežki slovenskega gledali
šča moderne dobe: ob 150-letnici ustanovitve Dramatičnega društva v Ljubljani, ed.
Štefan Vevar and Barbara Orel (Ljubljana: Slovenski gledališki inštitut, 2017), 228–
40. See also: Vladimír Karbusický, “Gorenjski slavček – Prepad med domovino in tu-
jino,” in Foersterjev zbornik, ur. Edo Škulj (Ljubljana: Družina, 1998): 101–7.
23 Moritz Csáky, “Kafka, die Operette und die Musik des jiddischen Theaters,” in Franz
Kafka und die Musik, ed. Steffen Höhne and Alice Stašková (Cologne, Weimar, Vi-
enna: Böhlau, 2018), 53–79.
336
The second reason, which is of course related to the first, is the short-
age of professional performers (the late beginnings of activity at the Conser
vatory in Ljubljana, which was established a mere year before the Maribor
Opera opened its doors, were covered extensively in last year’s publication).21
Given the small number of professional singers and instrumentalists work-
ing in Slovenia, the theatre’s management decision to opt for an apparently
less demanding genre such as operetta is therefore no surprise.
The third reason is one that is specific to the Maribor milieu: a Ger-
man-speaking audience that was remarkably well disposed towards oper-
etta. The presence of such an audience in Maribor undoubtedly contribut-
ed to the regular staging of operettas in the city. In the face of the numerous
changes that accompanied the transition to the new state and, consequent-
ly, a new geographical, political, economic, cultural and linguistic reality,
the audience evidently sought refuge in operetta, a genre that had been ex-
tremely popular even before the war. Operetta was unquestionably also part
of the genetic make-up of the Slovene middle classes after the First World
War. At this point it is worth pointing out that in Gorenjski slavček Slovenes
simultaneously have the first Slovene national opera and our first operetta.
Both Igor Grdina and Vladimír Karbusický identify, in the libretto and the
musical characteristics of the operetta version of G orenjski slavček staged in
1872, a clear desire to shape a national emblem.22 Or as Franz Kafka – who
loved operetta – put it in one of his last essays:23 operetta had always been
a proving ground for the realization of national tendencies. So despite the
growing popularity of talking pictures, operetta survived in Maribor right
up until the period following the Second World War, when some of the Slo-
vene apparatchiks of the day placed it on the list of undesirable elements,
as a result of which it disappeared from Slovenia’s theatre stages for sever-
al decades.
21 Jernej Weiss, ed., Konservatoriji: profesionalizacija in specializacija glasbenega dela
(Koper, Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem, Festival Ljubljana, 2019),
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-7055-86-3.
22 Igor Grdina, “Gorenjski slavček 1872,” in Začetki in dosežki slovenskega gledali
šča moderne dobe: ob 150-letnici ustanovitve Dramatičnega društva v Ljubljani, ed.
Štefan Vevar and Barbara Orel (Ljubljana: Slovenski gledališki inštitut, 2017), 228–
40. See also: Vladimír Karbusický, “Gorenjski slavček – Prepad med domovino in tu-
jino,” in Foersterjev zbornik, ur. Edo Škulj (Ljubljana: Družina, 1998): 101–7.
23 Moritz Csáky, “Kafka, die Operette und die Musik des jiddischen Theaters,” in Franz
Kafka und die Musik, ed. Steffen Höhne and Alice Stašková (Cologne, Weimar, Vi-
enna: Böhlau, 2018), 53–79.
336
