Page 67 - 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
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operetta as safe space
Operetta’s main goal was to offer a nostalgic world were the horrors of
war were invisible. A prime example for this is the phenomenal success of
the 1950 film version of Jessel’s Schwarzwaldmädel offering opulent apple
blossom scenes, folkloristic costumes, and toned-down sexual humor that
was never confrontational. The same is true for the many film operettas
that followed this example, especially Im weißen Rössl (1952) or the saccha-
rine Dreimäderlhaus (1958), both starring Johanna Matz as the other ‘inno-
cent’ darling of German post-war audiences.
In the boom of post-WW2 operetta many once ‘raunchy’ titles from
the Weimar years were resurrected, but they were now performed by op-
era singers on the radio and in subsidized theaters who treated the insinu-
ations so ‘operatically’ that any textual meaning was neutralized and it was
above all the carefree music that enraptured audiences. Austrian journalist
Bertram K. Steiner wrote as late as 1997:
One arrives at operetta as a veteran of existentialism, after one has
realized that progress and regression lead to the same inferno. For
radicals and bigots of all coloring, for immoral optimists, operetta
is a horror, of course. They will learn soon enough how idiotically
soothing it is to be wedded by the little finch (Dompfaff) and after
wards do as the swallows do.37
Operetta, according to this definition, is a pain killer.
In a perverted way, the situation in the US was not so very different.
There, too, society underwent a conservative roll-back after 1945. And this
affected operetta audiences who turned to the genre now with the same
longing for ‘nostalgia’ as in Germany, not to grovel in the lowest depths of
indecency as in the times of Genevieve de Brabant. As Richard Traubner
puts it in his 2003 updated edition of Operetta: A Theatrical History:
Operetta! Flowing champagne, ceaseless waltzing, risqué couplets,
Graustarkian uniforms and glittering ballgowns, romancing and
dancing! Gaiety and lightheartness, sentiment and schmaltz.38
37 Bertram Karl Steiner, “Operette und Existentialismus. Über ein schmerzstillendes
Mittel,” in Das Land des Glücks. Österreich und seine Operetten, eds. Erik Adam and
Willi Rainer (Klagenfurt, Ljubljana, Wien: Hermagoras Verlag, 1997), 22.
38 Richard Traubner, Operetta: A Theatrical History (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge,
2003), vii.
65
Operetta’s main goal was to offer a nostalgic world were the horrors of
war were invisible. A prime example for this is the phenomenal success of
the 1950 film version of Jessel’s Schwarzwaldmädel offering opulent apple
blossom scenes, folkloristic costumes, and toned-down sexual humor that
was never confrontational. The same is true for the many film operettas
that followed this example, especially Im weißen Rössl (1952) or the saccha-
rine Dreimäderlhaus (1958), both starring Johanna Matz as the other ‘inno-
cent’ darling of German post-war audiences.
In the boom of post-WW2 operetta many once ‘raunchy’ titles from
the Weimar years were resurrected, but they were now performed by op-
era singers on the radio and in subsidized theaters who treated the insinu-
ations so ‘operatically’ that any textual meaning was neutralized and it was
above all the carefree music that enraptured audiences. Austrian journalist
Bertram K. Steiner wrote as late as 1997:
One arrives at operetta as a veteran of existentialism, after one has
realized that progress and regression lead to the same inferno. For
radicals and bigots of all coloring, for immoral optimists, operetta
is a horror, of course. They will learn soon enough how idiotically
soothing it is to be wedded by the little finch (Dompfaff) and after
wards do as the swallows do.37
Operetta, according to this definition, is a pain killer.
In a perverted way, the situation in the US was not so very different.
There, too, society underwent a conservative roll-back after 1945. And this
affected operetta audiences who turned to the genre now with the same
longing for ‘nostalgia’ as in Germany, not to grovel in the lowest depths of
indecency as in the times of Genevieve de Brabant. As Richard Traubner
puts it in his 2003 updated edition of Operetta: A Theatrical History:
Operetta! Flowing champagne, ceaseless waltzing, risqué couplets,
Graustarkian uniforms and glittering ballgowns, romancing and
dancing! Gaiety and lightheartness, sentiment and schmaltz.38
37 Bertram Karl Steiner, “Operette und Existentialismus. Über ein schmerzstillendes
Mittel,” in Das Land des Glücks. Österreich und seine Operetten, eds. Erik Adam and
Willi Rainer (Klagenfurt, Ljubljana, Wien: Hermagoras Verlag, 1997), 22.
38 Richard Traubner, Operetta: A Theatrical History (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge,
2003), vii.
65
