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Operetta is a musical and dramatic performance similar to, yet shorter than opera, composed to a dramatic libretto with humorous elements. It is a complex production engaging the viewer in an appealing visual and audible experience marked by a harmonious blend of movement, colour and form. From a choreographic perpective, operetta brings a particular approach in that nearly the entire performance consists of planned dance sequences or ample parts of scenic movement. The research topic is the ball organised by Prince Orlofsky of Die Fledermaus (The Bat) operetta by Johann Strauss – The Son, a part of Act II, staged by Matteo Mazzoni, choreographed by Roxana Colceag and acted out by Victor Bucur. The wide range of sequences of dance steps in an operetta performance is due to the themes of such performances which allow and even impose the existence of choreographic moments, on the one hand, and to the rhythmic, danceable music often inspired from various dances specific to the geographical area where the action takes place, on the other. The performers must accurately execute the dance technical elements. The method used in creating the choreographic moment under research is immitation–based learning. Immitation is the best-known and frequently used dance composition means and consists in the reproduction by the performer, as faithfully as possible, of a dance phrase given by the choreographer. The scenic movement and the planned sequences of dance steps are the valuable fruit of the choreographer's searches and of the performers' endeavours towards achieving a flawless creative behaviour on stage, always starting from the director's perspective. In embodying their character, the performer does not truly rely on the external models they refer to, but on a great amount of spontaneity and creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reciprocal principle of the synthetic performer's self-training is the focus of this study because it is a fundamental pillar of role construction in musicals and operetta performances. By the term synthetic I distinguish that performer who has mastered the vocal, dance and acting arts, through which he realizes his roles in a given musical-stage work. The definition Synthetic is most accurate because of its broadness. The purpose of the independent work is to help the artist, within a rehearsal period, to prepare for each subsequent stage of the process. It is important to be able to get to the point where, when you go out in front of an audience, you will feel confident, completely removed from the feeling of fear and mistakes. When the actor has worked out individual elements calmly during self-preparation, they remain in him as safe places and he incorporates them during rehearsals. The process that the performer enters into while exploring the role on their own, much more quickly and naturally reaches the building moment of unlocking the SPONTANEOUS GAME. It is important during the independent work that the performer calmly and analytically outlines for himself exactly who in his role makes him insecure. The three main aspects that a synthetic artist should work on are: - the actor's construction of the textual part of the overall structure of the musical-stage work. - vocal learning and situating in the role structure of the individual musical numbers. The logical linking of the previous acting scene and the musical number. The discovery and exploration of the musical touches given by the composer to enable the performer to build a full-blooded vocal-artistic image. - overall plastic ideas, searching, by improvising the most accurate physical characteristic of the character, during the rehearsals with the choreographer these ideas can be shared and become the basis for developing the dance passages. Another direction in which the performer can practice independently is working out and perfecting dance passages already set by the choreographer. There is a triunity between these elements of the musical and the operetta, with certain binary relationships between each of the elements. Particular attention is needed on the accompaniment. Again, by asking specific questions, one must gain insight into the relationship between the accompaniment, the message of the song, and the musical score. The synthetic performer may experiment different physical body behaviours during the performance of a musical number in order to be able to suggest ideas during rehearsals to continue working on with the director, choreographer and scene partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of this presentation is Júlia Hajdu (1925–1987), the first and only female Hungarian operetta composer. Although there is no abundance of female composers in either international or Hungarian music literature, most of the few were canonically mistreated, despite their creations being worthy of research. The author of choice, Júlia Hajdu, had a rather rich artistic career during which she excelled in various musical genres, such as the composition of dance songs, operettas, revues, dance suites, and incidental music. Besides composing, she was also an outstanding pianist. At the Zeneakadémia (Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music), her master teachers were Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967) and György Ránki (1907–1992) – the latter, too, being a composer of operettas. Hajdu studied folk music from Kodály and jazz orchestration from Ránki. Hajdu's name was soon mentioned next to the best-known creators of popular genres by both her contemporaries and the critics of the age. Among others, she worked on the popular music shows of Magyar Televízió (Hungarian Television) and was employed as Hanna Honthy's piano accompanist. Hajdu recorded hundreds of dance songs, revues, and dance suites, as well as fourteen operettas, including those for radio and television broadcasts. Her career is to be explored within the cultural, political, and civilizational contexts of state socialism, thus understanding her work as not only another oeuvre of an operetta composer, but also as a representation of the artistic sentiment of a whole era. During her active years, she had to make compromises which she later interpreted as assertions of herself as a female artist in a male-dominated cultural milieu. After recognizing various narrative patterns in her creations, I aim to discuss Hajdu's career along two of the most prevalent and recurring issues: the "female composer as a sensation" narrative, and the "significance of the master teacher" narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Franz Lehár's 1928 Berlin operetta Friederike boasts an unusual subject: a romantic incident in the early life of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Weimar Berlin is usually considered as a haven for experimentation between high and low culture, a bifurcated view which has dominated German studies, but in this article I argue that Friederike is best considered as an example of the middlebrow. I examine the many sources which contributed to Friederike , from Goethe to Wagner to contemporary plays; analyse the score's stylistic allusions and the performance of star tenor Richard Tauber; and finally turn to Lehár's rhetorical positioning of his work on the Berlin theatrical scene. I argue that operetta scholarship itself has traditionally been ill-equipped to deal with Lehár's late works and operetta more generally, and that middlebrow studies' nuanced consideration of questions of art, commerce and prestige can contribute more widely to operetta and Weimar historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article is the second part of a study that explores, from a cultural studies perspective, the way in which the Danube has inspired the music of its riparian countries across the ages. The first part, which will appear in another publication, analyses significant works composed in the other nine European countries crossed by the river, while this second part focuses on folklore, urban songs, operetta, and film music composed in Romania -- the land of the delta. As chance will have it, the first part will be published later than the second. Starting from the physical and metaphysical kinship between water and sound waves, this article shows how the Danube has constantly loomed large in the musical creation on its Romanian banks, reflecting the way of life of the inhabitants, their customs and traditions, their mentalities and philosophies, also preserving information about long-gone local places and conferring immortality (or at least an afterlife) to ephemeral generations. Stressing the river's function as border meant both to separate and to unite lands and peoples and to bring into bold relief both their similarities and differences, the study underlines another paradoxical duality of the Danube: its versatility and its individuality. Analysing a selection of folk songs, Ioan Ivanovici's famous waltz "Danube Waves", George Grigoriu's eponymous operetta, and four films from the perspective of their soundtrack, the article concludes that it is opportune to tackle the great shapeshifting river through music -- a language that needs no translation and a journey that knows no borders -- in order to capture one more facet of its cultural significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates representations of ethnicity in the long-lived musical play Rose-Marie from 1924, with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, book by Otto Harbach, and lyrics by Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II, and its subsequent MGM film adaptations in 1936 and 1954. The story is set in Canada, and images of Indigenous people include white-created tropes of children of nature, vicious savages and drunkards. These views are manifested aurally through Indianist musical tropes of the time, and are especially evident in 'Indian Love Call' and 'Totem-Tom-Tom'. Whiteness is performed opposite portrayals of Indigenous people that range from the 'noble savage' of the famous 'Indian Love Call' to Wanda, a First Nations woman characterized as violent and over-sexualized in the 1924 and 1954 versions. Friml's multifarious score includes recognizable Indianist tropes of the time as well as quintessential operetta and musical comedy fare, thus musicalizing cultural differences through established Eurocentric means. In Rose-Marie, the title character's mobile ethnicity shifts from being presumably French-born French Canadian in the original to English Canadian in the 1936 film (starring Jeanette MacDonald) and French Canadian in the 1954 version (starring Ann Blyth). Although Rose-Marie and Wanda behave in similar ways, Rose-Marie's singing whiteness allows her to become a romantic lead, whereas Wanda, whose dance-dominated performance mode emphasizes a sensual physicality, is vilified because of her ethnic heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will focus on the reconstruction of the history of operetta companies established in interwar Belgrade. I gave priority to those ensembles that held regular performances for a longer period of time in the late 1920s and late 1930s. Aside from making a detailed overview of several more stable operetta theatres in Belgrade at the time, including their repertoire and leading artists, the attention will also be paid to uncovering the broader context of their work. The issues of state cultural policy and the rise of competitiveness inside the local spheres of culture and entertainment will also be discussed.

This article examines the development of operetta and musicals in East and West Germany from 1949 until the reunification in 1989–90. It focuses on the special ideological requirements of popular musical entertainment in the socialist east, discusses how works by Offenbach and Strauss were adapted, considers how works from the Soviet Union were imported and examines how new works were created to fulfil the ideal of 'socialist realism'. The arrival of Broadway musicals in East Germany in the 1960s were typically made to fit into the system of state subsidized theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 1928, the Andrássy Street Theatre in Budapest planned to re-stage a one-act operetta play titled The First Kiss is Mine. Its libretto was written by Jenő Heltai, and the music was composed by Albert Szirmai. The new performance started out as a resounding success. But, referring to current laws on public morality, Ministry of Interior department in charge of controlling public and cultural programmes banned the play without delay, on 18 May, and Minister of the Interior, Béla Scitovszky ordered an investigation into the matter. People referred to the event as a scandal, and the press spoke of it as an absurdity, as the theatre enterprise was endangered by the resulting loss in income. After the ban, the actors were only allowed to perform the play for a commission sent from the Ministry of Interior, and finally, on 22 May, Scitovszky permitted the program after all, with some minor changes. In my study, I reconstruct and present the events of these few days with the help of contemporary journalistic sources (reports, interviews, etc.) – Budapesti Hírlap, Esti Kurir, Magyar Hírlap, Magyarország, Pesti Hírlap, Pesti Napló, Újság, 8 Órai Újság –, the circumstances of the prohibition, the protest and opinion of the playwrights, the position of the commission, the performance for the commission, and the background of the permission for the new performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We find Romanian theater germs in specific popular forms: the Herods, the outlaws (the Jians), the peasant wedding or the play of dolls, the Calusari or the Drăgaica fair. The first expressions of Romanian cult music went to the field of theater. The vaudeville was affirmed in the first half of the 19th century, and in the second half the center of interest moved in the direction of operetta and musical comedy. The birth certificate of Romanian opera was signed by Eduard Caudella with his historical opera called „Petru Rareş”. At the beginning of the 20th century different stylistic orientations combined with masterful transfigurations of Romanian folklore, the moment of synthesis of the genre being represented by the lyric tragedy „Oedip”, the masterpiece of George Enescu.

This article present how the musical genre of operetta has evolved from one time period to another, how it has been influenced by the tradition and the folklore of each country, and the kind of imprints it left on the culture that approached it. Starting from the fact that music is the universal language that includes ethnicities, nationalities, and geographical divisions, it is the one that brings together people from all backgrounds and it unites them in appreciation, participation, and education. The advantages derived from the approach of multicultural music education can be illustrated through all these elements - a much wider and interesting openness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many popular singers made film musicals in the period 1930–1960. This article focuses on two of the most popular and well-known chanteurs de charme in France, Tino Rossi and Georges Guétary, neither of whom has had academic work devoted to him. The article reviews their major films and their themes, and contrasts their reception and performance styles, arguing that they may well be seen in a relatively undifferentiated way, but that this disregards a shift in performance styles that is anchored in pre-war and post-war sensibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monday on February 24th 2020, in the Auditorium of Mihai Eminescu Central University Library in Iași the show-recital entitled Dragobete Stories took place. Having the love theme, 4 teachers and 9 singer-actors from George Enescu National University of Arts present to the public arias and duets from the national and international repertoire, pages extracted from the genre of opera and operetta. The excursion on a route that included opera seria, comedy, historical opera, lyrical-dramatic legend, Viennese operetta, Romanian operetta, Russian operetta was coordinated by the presentation of Lecturer PhD Mrs. Consuela Radu-Țaga. The interdisciplinary team set out to remove the boundaries between music and theater, among the subjects of canto, piano accompaniament, acting, scenic movement, opera class, and singer-actors proposed a scenic language dominated by lyrical-dramatic coordinates. The staging benefited from the fruitful collaboration with Lecturer PhD Mrs. Dumitriana Condurache (stage director), and the piano accompaniament was made by assistant professor PhD Raluca Ehupov and assistant professor PhD Laura Turtă-Timofte. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is devoted to printed schlager or hit music of the interwar era. A significant number of works by foreign composers are stored in Latvian libraries, some of which are popular printed music. They have not been studied historically. This publication is an attempt to begin analyzing schlager issues, researching the work of publishing houses and the main trends in schlager sheet music publishing in interwar Latvia. As a first step in compiling and structuring popular music published in Latvia, the study focuses on Riga publishing houses, with the aim of defining them, determining their number, scope and main trends in their style of operation. During the interwar period at least 18 publishers were recorded, whose scholarly editions mainly represent dance genres, operetta music and, since 1929, the growing importance of film music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present part of an archive research that is being made in Brazil and France that has the purpose of understanding and analyzing the musical popular theater genre called operetta, in order to establish a critical revaluation of the genre. This genre was considered, by theater theoretical studies, during a long time, inferior when compared to dramas and comedies. However, nowadays exists a critical revision in Brazil that seeks to change that point of view. The historical research is a crucial part of this revaluation. For this paper, we place emphasis in the operetta La petite mariée (1875) ("The little married girl") written by Eugéne Leterrier and Albert Vanloo. The material collected about the French operetta demonstrates how complex and refined the production of these shows was. Besides reviews, we found drawings of the scenes, posters and the manuscript of the director's notebook. These materials are precious to the new critical appointments that this research aims to achieve, because they suggest that the quality of those pieces where as challenging as other better evaluated theater genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journey of operetta performers in creating their role, from the initial preparations to the premiere. The personal, organizational, artistic and professional aspects of the preparation process: studying the score, individual practice, professional auditions, the casting process, individual rehearsal time with piano accompaniment, learning the stage direction, the staging of dramatic moments, collaborating with the orchestra, vocal synchronization with the stage partners, preservation of vocal accuracy and abilities, in all stage situations, creating and learning the stage movement and situations required, the importance of accurate diction while singing and uttering dialogues, singing and acting in costume, familiarizing one's self with the set, the rhythm of the scenes, stage orientation, establishing the rhythm of the stage portrayal, establishing a relationship with the audience, paying attention to their reactions, stage presence throughout the performance, the ability to improvise in unforeseen situations, appropriate reactions, gestures and behavior during applause. We will thus analyze a few primadonna and grande dame roles from the standpoint of the above-mentioned elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on "Hier irrt Goethe," the three-act operetta parody in Germany of the Weimar Republic created by Die vier Nachrichter, a cabaret troupe founded by theatre students at the University of Munich working with Arthur Kutscher. Topics covered include history of operetta in Germany, the 1932 performance of "Hier irrt Goethe" in line with the centennial of poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's death, and the ironic context of the operetta.

The appearance of zarzuela in Hungary is entirely unknown in musicology. In the present study, I discuss the currently unchartered reception of the zarzuela El rey que rabió (first performed in Spain in 1891) by Ruperto Chapí (1851-1909), a Spanish composer of over one hundred stage pieces and four string quartets. Premièred as Az unatkozó király in Budapest seven years later in 1898, Chapí's zarzuela met with resounding success in the Hungarian press, a fervour which reverberated into the early decades of the twentieth century. Emil Szalai and Sándor Hevesi's skilful Hungarian translation, together with Izsó Barna's appropriate adjustments and reorchestration, accordingly catered the work to Budapest audiences. Through analysis of hand-written performance materials of Az unatkozó király (preserved in the National Széchényi Library), alongside a detailed study of the Hungarian reception, the profound interest in Spanish music - particularly in relation to musical theatre - amongst the turn-of-the-century Hungarian theatre-going public is revealed. This paper explores how Az unatkozó király became a success in Hungary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article utilises a nearly unique collection of material (theatre box office data) and the reports of Soviet bureaucrats charged with overseeing musical theatre to analyse the programming and reception of operetta performed in the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1948, a period during which Soviet society shifted from world war to Cold War, and music, musical life and musical theatres underwent ideological scrutiny and endured intervention by the Communist Party's Central Committee. It argues that although official programming and audience preferences were rarely in sync, their disjuncture followed a surprising pattern according to which Russian operetta-going audiences proved both more conservative and more patriotic than those responsible for the programming in operetta theatres. Marked differences between this Russian pattern and patterns observable in other republics – Ukraine gets particular attention – also attest to the diversity of taste and official ambitions for musical programming in the postwar Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates the dependency on the French translation of the Italian and English translations of Witold Gombrowicz's 1966 drama entitled Operetta and discusses the relationship between these three translations and the Polish original. This has been conducted in terms of the author's literary and dramatic style peculiarities, as well as his ideological and artistic orientation. It proves that, paradoxically, a translation - even a second-hand one - does not always imply major detachment from the author's intention and vision. The comparative study of the four linguistic versions of the drama reveals that most of the original Polish text's dominants were significantly extended and enhanced in the French translation. These amplifications were subsequently adopted by both Italian and English translators, even though the English translator does not acknowledge the use of French text in any of his notes. The article focuses on two main aspects of Operetta's translations: indirectness (in the case of the Italian and partly of the English translation) and authorial control over the translation process (in the case of the French translation), in order to determine their influence on Gombrowicz's individual voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work comprises three uneven parts. In the first part we have attempted to offer an abbreviated history of the operetta genre, from the beginning of the 17th century to its Hungarian composers at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Instead of an exhaustive historical presentation, we focused on pursuing a line of argumentation that would explain the emergence of the Hungarian composers from Budapest and Vienna, whose operettas successfully entertain audiences until this day. In the second part, we reviewed the specific topics approached by the Hungarian operetta composers, exemplifying these by briefly presenting the contents of the 14 operettas that we will analyze during our doctoral research. In the third part we compared the genres of opera and operetta, in terms of their elements. We considered this to be necessary in order to be able to demonstrate the specific features of the operetta genre and also emphasize the fact that they are very elaborate works created by talented and well-trained composers, and their staging required just as much talent, work and dedication throughout history, as their great operatic counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This hereby study has two main parts, uneven in length. In the first part we have attempted to classify the types of voices within the genre of operetta, while detailing their functional aspects, focusing on the analysis of the use of the soprano voice for the roles of prima donna and grande dame. In our second part, we have presented the main female roles of the 14 operettas that we will analyze within our doctoral research, classified from the standpoint of their authors. We have also added some interesting facts concerning the great Hungarian operetta composers, as well as mentioned famous performers who portrayed the main roles of these operettas during the time they were performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The editorial recounts the genesis of this collection of essays, which originated at the conference Song, Stage, and Screen XVI; the conference was held in 2021 in video format rather than in Salzburg and Linz due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We explain a few keywords related to mobility studies and the mobility paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

George Zaharescu (1928-2007), stage director, opera and operetta director, lyrical theatre creator, co-founded the Iaşi Opera House in 1956, along with Dimitrie Tăbăcaru. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Arts in Iași, teaching „Opera". In 1975 he took over the Bucharest Operetta management for more than 15 years and managed to highlight the most productive theatrical team of the Operetta genre in Romania at that time, through 50 titles presented and over 8000 representations. After retiring from the Operetta's leadership in 1990, he was dedicated to creating new lyrical artists' classes at the National Music University in Bucharest until 2004 when he yielded the opera class to his disciple, director Daniel Prallea - Blaga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In mid 19th century, along the theatrical model created by Vaudeville and Posse, the genre of the so-called népszínmű (folk drama) emerged in Hungarian literature. From its very beginning, the genre divided the Hungarian public, and despite the fact that these plays entered even into the core repertoire of the representative theaters, they were subject to ceaseless scrutiny and attack from a large group of the literary and cultural elite. Among other things, these dramas provided an alternative national representation to the elite image of the nation. My paper will foreground this successful, but highly debated and "residualized" local genre as a double ideological response of both to the local forms of theatrical nationalisms and to the misreading, reinterpretation and nationalization of Western European genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1930 and 1942, Oscar Hammerstein II was not the failure that he and others claimed. In print and interviews, Hammerstein represented this as a period when his works were rejected by audiences and critics, and biographers have followed his lead. Countering that subject-imposed viewpoint, this article examines newly digitized primary sources, audience reception and a more recent generation of criticism to greatly modify previous assessments. This study tracks 25 songs that attained prominence and explores Hammerstein's neglected contributions to popular musicals such as May Wine (1935), The Great Waltz (1938, surprisingly well-known in China) and Hellzapoppin (1938). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ester Rokhl Kaminska (1870-1925) was the star of the Warsaw Yiddish theatre scene. She began her acting career in the early 1890s, performing shund (cheap) operettas in small, itinerant troupes. In 1905 she established a theatre in Warsaw with her husband, in which she served as leading actress and manager, until her death. She belonged to the first generation of Yiddish theatre artists who introduced the medium of theatre into Eastern European Jewish society and facilitated its legitimization. After her death, colleagues and critics designated her as "the mother of Yiddish theatre." In this article, I investigate the motherly image of E. R. Kaminska. I argue that this image was not merely a matter of nostalgic yearning for a beloved actress in the golden age of Yiddish theatre. It was Kaminska herself who, while playing a variety of mothers' roles in the course of her career, formulated her own multilayered, motherly, public image. Her mothers' roles, to my mind, had a wide-reaching effect not only on Kaminska's acting career, but also on the canonization of Yiddish theatre altogether, as they turned the theatre -- the very medium in which they were created -- into an acceptable art form, suitable for a respectable bourgeois Jewish audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operetta films were one of the most popular film genres in France during the 1930s through to the 1950s. Some films were film versions of stage shows, others were made specifically for cinema. Jacques Pills and André Tabet formed a successful male duo in the 1930s, and made two largely forgotten but successful operetta films.Toi, c’est moi/You are Me (René Guissart, 1936) was originally a stage operetta, while their follow-upPrends la route/On the Road (Jean Boyer, 1937) was written for the cinema. Both of the films involve travel, the first to the colonies (the Antilles); the second, which has as its focus the popular pastime of touring, travel around France. As is the case for other musical films, both films are utopian, the second in particular corresponding to the aspirations that led to the short-lived but politically influential Popular Front 1936–1938. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article's primary aim is to discuss the function of turning points and continuity within historiography. That a historical narrative, produced at a certain time and place, influences the way the historian shapes and develops the argument is problematized by an emphasis on the complex relationship between turning points and continuity as colligatory concepts within an argumentative framework. Aided by a number of examples from three historical narratives on operetta, the article stresses the importance of creating new narratives about the past. Two specific examples from the history of operetta, the birth of the genre and the role of music, are used to illustrate the need to revise not only the use of source material and the narrative strategy used, but also how the argument proposed by the historian gathers strength. The interpretation of turning points and continuity as colligatory concepts illustrate the need to revise earlier historical narratives when trying to counteract the repetitiveness of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Le Verfugbar aux Enfers is an operetta written by Germaine Tillion, an ethnologist and French political prisoner, in Ravensbrück, in October 1944. Tillion's purpose, immediately expressed in the operetta's title which alludes to Offenbach's Orphée aux Enfers, is to represent, in a comical way and through an exercise of ironic distance, some aspects of her own and other prisoners' experiences in the camp which she continually 'observed' between 1943 and 1944. These two levels of the text are the main focus of this article. More specifically, I regard and explore the operetta as a montage of 'ethnographic' material and music-theatre sources, like quotations of couplets, songs or other music numbers from well-known operettas, and also as a possible 'testimony' to a specifically female vision and experiences of bodily decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For people around the world, "Broadway" means the Broadway musical, the epitome of singing and dancing, glamor and dazzle. Although the Broadway musical is customarily perceived as the most distinctively U. S. theatre form - whose national and municipal identity is embedded in its name - it has circumnavigated the globe countless times. As the globalized cultural economy increasingly facilitates the worldwide circulation of multinational theatrical productions, Broadway-style musicals are being manufactured from Hamburg to Shanghai. They are no longer a specifically U. S. form, but a global brand that freely crosses borders, genres, and styles. The mobility of the newly deterritorialized Broadway musical is the result of many phenomena, notably the rise of a generation of producers, writers, directors, and actors around the world who have absorbed the musical's conventions and vernaculars and who disseminate locally-produced musical entertainments. In the twenty-first century, these new Broadway-style musicals have become the preeminent transnational theatre form, whose conventions have also been absorbed into both popular and elite theatrical entertainments around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]