Page 58 - 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. 58
opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
who could never afford the luxury of such a visit for their wives and
daughters if someone had not given them free tickets.29
What Hohenegg describes is an interesting blend of spheres that is –
and remained – typical of the operetta business. Operetta had become a
balancing act, trying to find the right mix of extremes to satisfy oppos-
ing audience expectations. The elitist audience had moved mostly under-
ground in the 1880s and 90s, as Marion Linhardt describes in Residen
zstadt und Metropole. She remarks that high-class operetta audiences went
to more secluded cabaret venues where the genre blossomed as late-night
entertainment, often composed by the same authors who wrote the large
scale works for the masses. These cabaret operettas incorporated the latest
trends, dance crazes and structural elements. Syncopations and the cake
walk, for example, all came to Continental Europe from the United States
and England via these elitist miniature operettas, and only then infiltrated
the mainstream genre.
Depending on where operettas were performed – and who attended
them –, the genre was shown in different guises. Often, the intimate venues
were situated in the same theaters where the big operettas were performed,
and select audiences who could afford to do so would go from the large au-
ditorium to the ‘safe space’ of a night club for one-act operettas such as
Der Petroliumkönig oder Donauzauber: Musteroperette in zwei Bildern by
Egon Friedell and Sch. Konrad (1908) or Elektra by Béla Laszky (1910) which
starred Mela Mars. In Vienna, there was Die Hölle in the basement of the
Theater an der Wien, in Munich there was Die 11 Scharfrichter, in Berlin
there were many venues, among them Kabarett der Komiker or Die Wil-
de Bühne (in the basement of Theater des Westens). Actors and actresses
also went from the main evening performance to the cabaret and contin-
ued performing throughout the night, in the 1920s they added film engage-
ments during the day to this type of job hopping; Max Hansen, the original
Leopold in Im weißen Rössl, is a famous example. Which brings us back to
Heike Quissek and her assessment that anything can be played as operetta,
and that operetta can be played as everything else, too.
29 “Die Hautevolee und die Hautedemimonde sind sicherlich vollständig vertreten. […]
Die oberen Ränge sind fast ausnahmslos mit Beamten angefüllt, die sich, ihren Frau
en und Töchtern den Luxus eines Premierenbesuches wahrlich nicht leisten könnten,
wenn ihnen eben nicht unter der Hand die Karten zugesteckt worden wären.” – Franz
von Hohenegg, Operettenkönige: Ein Wiener Theaterroman (Berlin: Hermann Laue
Verlag, s. a.), 181–2.
56
who could never afford the luxury of such a visit for their wives and
daughters if someone had not given them free tickets.29
What Hohenegg describes is an interesting blend of spheres that is –
and remained – typical of the operetta business. Operetta had become a
balancing act, trying to find the right mix of extremes to satisfy oppos-
ing audience expectations. The elitist audience had moved mostly under-
ground in the 1880s and 90s, as Marion Linhardt describes in Residen
zstadt und Metropole. She remarks that high-class operetta audiences went
to more secluded cabaret venues where the genre blossomed as late-night
entertainment, often composed by the same authors who wrote the large
scale works for the masses. These cabaret operettas incorporated the latest
trends, dance crazes and structural elements. Syncopations and the cake
walk, for example, all came to Continental Europe from the United States
and England via these elitist miniature operettas, and only then infiltrated
the mainstream genre.
Depending on where operettas were performed – and who attended
them –, the genre was shown in different guises. Often, the intimate venues
were situated in the same theaters where the big operettas were performed,
and select audiences who could afford to do so would go from the large au-
ditorium to the ‘safe space’ of a night club for one-act operettas such as
Der Petroliumkönig oder Donauzauber: Musteroperette in zwei Bildern by
Egon Friedell and Sch. Konrad (1908) or Elektra by Béla Laszky (1910) which
starred Mela Mars. In Vienna, there was Die Hölle in the basement of the
Theater an der Wien, in Munich there was Die 11 Scharfrichter, in Berlin
there were many venues, among them Kabarett der Komiker or Die Wil-
de Bühne (in the basement of Theater des Westens). Actors and actresses
also went from the main evening performance to the cabaret and contin-
ued performing throughout the night, in the 1920s they added film engage-
ments during the day to this type of job hopping; Max Hansen, the original
Leopold in Im weißen Rössl, is a famous example. Which brings us back to
Heike Quissek and her assessment that anything can be played as operetta,
and that operetta can be played as everything else, too.
29 “Die Hautevolee und die Hautedemimonde sind sicherlich vollständig vertreten. […]
Die oberen Ränge sind fast ausnahmslos mit Beamten angefüllt, die sich, ihren Frau
en und Töchtern den Luxus eines Premierenbesuches wahrlich nicht leisten könnten,
wenn ihnen eben nicht unter der Hand die Karten zugesteckt worden wären.” – Franz
von Hohenegg, Operettenkönige: Ein Wiener Theaterroman (Berlin: Hermann Laue
Verlag, s. a.), 181–2.
56
