2. France.

Although it was not until the mid-1850s that what is now regarded as operetta began to emerge as a separately identifiable genre, works that would today be classified as such were already in existence. Adolphe Adam’s Le chalet (1834) and La poupée de Nuremberg (1852), Massé’s Les noces de Jeannette (1853) and Offenbach’s Pépito (1853) had scores far more operatic in form than the collections of songs provided for vaudevilles but were nonetheless lighter and more modest than the works increasingly being accepted by the Opéra-Comique.

Adam himself had opened an Opéra-National in 1847, though the venture proved short-lived. More successful was Hervé’s Théâtre des Folies-Nouvelles opened in 1854 as the Théâtre des Folies-Concertantes. However, it was with the opening of Offenbach’s Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens during the Paris Exhibition year of 1855 that these foundations were firmly built upon (see fig.1). The works of Offenbach’s repertory were initially little more than satirical sketches with just a few musical numbers. However, the improbable plots and the wit and sparkle of the productions, composed not always by Offenbach himself but also by such men as Adam, Emile Jonas and Delibes, made them the rage of Paris. Within a couple of years Offenbach was able to tour not only in France but abroad.

With a small theatre licensed initially for only three or four stage performers, Offenbach’s early opéras bouffes or opérettes remained for some time necessarily modest one-act pieces, satirical or farcical in tone, used musical scores of up to eight numbers (solos, duets, trios and quartets) and were accompanied by an orchestra of up to 16 players. The relaxation of restrictions on the number of stage performers permitted him, in 1858, to put on his first two-act opéra bouffe, the mythological satire Orphée aux enfers, which added enormously to his reputation at home and abroad and provided operetta with its first enduring masterpiece.

Although Offenbach continued to produce one-act works, the pattern for the future was set by the sequence of longer works that included, most particularly, La belle Hélène (1864), La vie parisienne (1866) and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867; fig.2). All had lighthearted and witty books by Meilhac and Halévy, satirizing the Paris of Napoleon III. They call for a full cast, chorus, orchestra of up to 30 musicians, and scores comprising some 20 to 30 musical numbers including fully developed opening numbers and finales. By the end of the 1860s the French opéra bouffe had grown into a fully fledged genre with characteristics that firmly distinguished it not only from contemporary vaudeville but also, in its satirical wit and popular appeal, from opéra comique.

After the civil war of 1869–70 and the demise of the Second Empire, Offenbach’s popularity began to wane. The French public came to prefer a more romantic form of entertainment and they found it in works by Charles Lecocq, Robert Planquette, Louis Varney and Edmond Audran. Grace and refinement allied to classical musical standards were brought to French operetta by Messager. His Véronique (1898), together with Louis Ganne’s rousing Les saltimbanques (1899), ensured that at the turn of the century French operetta could still be ranked as a worthy successor to the old opéra comique.

During the 20th century French operetta progressively lost ground in international terms to Anglo-American musical plays on the one hand and Viennese operetta on the other. Messager continued to uphold French musical standards, as did Reynaldo Hahn, another cultured musician who combined a more modern style with traditional opéra comique standards. Increasingly, however, French operetta could be typified by works that owed more to the French music-hall chanson than to operatic traditions. Since World War II the name of operetta has been kept alive by the opérette à grand spectacle exemplified by a series of works by Francis Lopez that began with La belle de Cadix (1945); these retain the operetta’s taste for escapist stories, exotic locations, spectacle and effects, but have little substantial contact with the operatic format of the classical operetta.

Operetta