Page 64 - 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. 64
opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
Photo 7: The “Tiroler Gruppe” as originally used by Erik Charell in the revue Für Dich,
Berlin 1925. Erich Urban wrote about them in BZ am Mittag: “Saftige Kerle in Lederhosen, die
sich im Takt Dinger herunterhauen. Mein Gott, sie haben die kernigen Backen dazu!” (“Juicy lads
in leather pants who slap each other rhythmically. My god, they have the right butch bums/
cheeks for it.”)
the Casino de Paris in the 1920s, he was rumoured to be a foreign (anti-Na-
zi) spy, and he had same-sex affairs. Did operetta offer him a safe space in
the heart of Nazi power, in performances attended by the ‘Führer’ and his
top officials? And what was his open display of muscle and flesh about? Did
the Nazis want to offer women whose boyfriends and husbands had been
sent to the front lines of war a chance to marvel at heroic male forms – as
an update of attractions such as C. D. Marius?
The difference is that inserting Spadolini into a Lehár operetta has
strong ideological messages: catering to female lust, as in Chilperic, is one
thing, doing so in the context of a world war another, emphasizing the axis
Berlin-Rome and the partnership with Mussolini and celebrating the ide-
al of the Übermensch is a far cry from the emancipated approach to oper-
etta from London in the 1870s. But Spadolini can be seen in that tradition,
which is what Matthias Kauffmann does in his book Operette im ‘Dritten
Reich’: Musikalisches Unterhaltungstheater zwischen 1933 und 1945. He also
sees Spadolini in the tradition of the Weimar Republic revue operettas, in-
cluding the homoerotic elements that can be found in Erik Charell pro-
ductions such as Im weißen Rössl (1930). The Jewish ‘defilement’ of Alpine
62
Photo 7: The “Tiroler Gruppe” as originally used by Erik Charell in the revue Für Dich,
Berlin 1925. Erich Urban wrote about them in BZ am Mittag: “Saftige Kerle in Lederhosen, die
sich im Takt Dinger herunterhauen. Mein Gott, sie haben die kernigen Backen dazu!” (“Juicy lads
in leather pants who slap each other rhythmically. My god, they have the right butch bums/
cheeks for it.”)
the Casino de Paris in the 1920s, he was rumoured to be a foreign (anti-Na-
zi) spy, and he had same-sex affairs. Did operetta offer him a safe space in
the heart of Nazi power, in performances attended by the ‘Führer’ and his
top officials? And what was his open display of muscle and flesh about? Did
the Nazis want to offer women whose boyfriends and husbands had been
sent to the front lines of war a chance to marvel at heroic male forms – as
an update of attractions such as C. D. Marius?
The difference is that inserting Spadolini into a Lehár operetta has
strong ideological messages: catering to female lust, as in Chilperic, is one
thing, doing so in the context of a world war another, emphasizing the axis
Berlin-Rome and the partnership with Mussolini and celebrating the ide-
al of the Übermensch is a far cry from the emancipated approach to oper-
etta from London in the 1870s. But Spadolini can be seen in that tradition,
which is what Matthias Kauffmann does in his book Operette im ‘Dritten
Reich’: Musikalisches Unterhaltungstheater zwischen 1933 und 1945. He also
sees Spadolini in the tradition of the Weimar Republic revue operettas, in-
cluding the homoerotic elements that can be found in Erik Charell pro-
ductions such as Im weißen Rössl (1930). The Jewish ‘defilement’ of Alpine
62
