French operetta after operetta, 1872-1900
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bristol
Department Name: School of Arts
Abstract
In common usage, 'French operetta' is virtually synonymous with Second Empire opéra-bouffe. Even at the academic level, the term is
indelibly associated in the collective imagination with a small number of works by Jacques Offenbach and his main competitor Hervé
dating from a short period of time, from 1858 through 1869: among others, Orphée aux enfers, La belle Hélène, La Grande-Duchesse
de Gérolstein, Le petit Faust. And yet we routinely use 'operetta', or opérette, for stage works of the following decades, assuming a
linear and unbroken tradition. This Global Fellowship project, 'French operetta after operetta, 1872-1900' (OP-aftER-ETTA), reexamines
the history of French light theatre with music after 1870, asking two provocative questions:
(1) What if fin-de-siècle 'operetta' was not operetta? That is, what if the continuity between Second Empire opéra-bouffe and later
'operetta', both subsumed under the word opérette, were a fiction?
(2) When, by whom, and why, then, was this fiction forged? How did Second Empire opéra-bouffe become opérette, and how were
later works incorporated into a history of opérette that has its starting point in Second Empire opéra-bouffe?
OP-aftER-ETTA lays the groundwork for a revisionist account of a large portion of French theatre in the first decades of the Third
Republic. The originality of its approach is fourfold:
It reframes its very object of study by questioning conventional generic categories and adopting alternative ones.
It shifts the focus away from authors and individual works, and towards genres, institutions, and audiences.
It bridges 'musical theatre' and 'spoken theatre', a dichotomy that is at
odds with the reality of nineteenth-century French theatre.
It does away with traditional conceptions of the history of theatre as a history of drama, biased in favour of works with a claim to
high art, of works later selected as canonical, and of new works as opposed to revivals.
indelibly associated in the collective imagination with a small number of works by Jacques Offenbach and his main competitor Hervé
dating from a short period of time, from 1858 through 1869: among others, Orphée aux enfers, La belle Hélène, La Grande-Duchesse
de Gérolstein, Le petit Faust. And yet we routinely use 'operetta', or opérette, for stage works of the following decades, assuming a
linear and unbroken tradition. This Global Fellowship project, 'French operetta after operetta, 1872-1900' (OP-aftER-ETTA), reexamines
the history of French light theatre with music after 1870, asking two provocative questions:
(1) What if fin-de-siècle 'operetta' was not operetta? That is, what if the continuity between Second Empire opéra-bouffe and later
'operetta', both subsumed under the word opérette, were a fiction?
(2) When, by whom, and why, then, was this fiction forged? How did Second Empire opéra-bouffe become opérette, and how were
later works incorporated into a history of opérette that has its starting point in Second Empire opéra-bouffe?
OP-aftER-ETTA lays the groundwork for a revisionist account of a large portion of French theatre in the first decades of the Third
Republic. The originality of its approach is fourfold:
It reframes its very object of study by questioning conventional generic categories and adopting alternative ones.
It shifts the focus away from authors and individual works, and towards genres, institutions, and audiences.
It bridges 'musical theatre' and 'spoken theatre', a dichotomy that is at
odds with the reality of nineteenth-century French theatre.
It does away with traditional conceptions of the history of theatre as a history of drama, biased in favour of works with a claim to
high art, of works later selected as canonical, and of new works as opposed to revivals.