4. Britain and the usa.

In London, too, English versions of Offenbach’s opéras bouffes began to appear during the 1860s, and it was directly under the influence of Offenbach’s Les deux aveugles (1855) that Arthur Sullivan composed Cox and Box (1866). The series of works on which Sullivan collaborated with W.S. Gilbert between 1871 and 1896 (including HMS Pinafore, 1878; fig.3) swept the stages of the English-speaking world, though success in translation was limited by the distinctively British nature of both humour and music. Other British examples came from Frederic Clay, Alfred Cellier, Edward Solomon and Edward Jakobowski.

It was especially in London, during the 1890s, that a trend emerged that was to have fundamental significance for the development of operetta and the popular musical theatre. At a time when imported French operettas and the native comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were losing their immediate appeal, the London public took readily to the style of show loosely termed ‘musical comedy’ or ‘musical play’. Sidney Jones’s The Geisha (1896) retained much of the comic opera tradition of Sullivan and proved a phenomenal contemporary success not only throughout the British Empire but around the world, receiving more performances in Germany than any contemporary native work. Other shows, however, were concerned less with the integrity of the libretto than with a more immediate appeal, with an emphasis on contemporary fashion, glamorous male and female chorus lines, catchy interpolated numbers, and specially staged song-and-dance numbers.

Sullivan’s acknowledged comic opera successor was Edward German, with Merrie England (1902) and Tom Jones (1907). In commercial terms, however, it was the Edwardian ‘musical plays’ that captured the public fancy with their light songs and dances, elaborate chorus routines and fashionable dress. Through them the British musical theatre product was, for a few years at the beginning of the century, the most readily exported school of operetta.

The Edwardian musical play reached its zenith in such works as Paul Rubens’s Miss Hook of Holland (1907), Monckton and Howard Talbot’s The Arcadians (1909) and Lionel Monckton’s The Quaker Girl (1910). Thereafter the genre faded rapidly in favour of, first, the Viennese operettas of Lehár, Strauss and Fall, and then ragtime-inspired revue and song-and-dance musical comedy from America. Only in the special conditions of wartime did the glamorous Edwardian-style musical show enjoy a brief revival of fortune, in The Maid of the Mountains (1916), with a score by Harold Fraser-Simson and additional numbers by James W. Tate, and the ‘spectacular musical tale of the east’ Chu Chin Chow (1916), with music by Frederic Norton.

During the 19th century, European works had been readily welcomed in the USA, where a significant body of native works had also begun to emerge in the 1890s. Among those that owed allegiance to the example of Gilbert and Sullivan were Reginald De Koven’s Robin Hood (1891) and John Philip Sousa’s El capitan (1895), while Victor Herbert’s The Fortune Teller (1898) and Gustave Kerker’s The Belle of New York (1897) followed the trend towards melodically more ingratiating works.

British taste embraced American musical comedy during the 1920s, but the lingering taste for works in the older European operetta traditions was still catered for in the USA by works such as Sigmund Romberg’s The Student Prince (1924) and Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart’s Rose-Marie (1924), and in Britain by Noël Coward’s Bitter Sweet (1929) and Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years (1939).

Operetta