The Cambridge Companion to Operetta

Anastasia Belina is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. She is author and editor of A Musician Divided (2013), Die tägliche Mühe ein Mensch zu sein (2013), Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands (2013, co-edited edition), and The Business of Opera (edited with Derek B. Scott, 2015). Between 2014 and 2019 she researched the reception of German operetta in Warsaw as part of a European Research Council funded project. She is currently working on the BBC and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project Forgotten Female Composers for which she is researching the life and work of Augusta Holmès. Derek B. Scott is Professor of Critical Musicology at the University of Leeds. His books include Sounds of the Metropolis (2008), and Musical Style and Social Meaning (2010). His musical compositions include two symphonies for brass band and an operetta, Wilberforce. He has also worked professionally as a singer, actor and pianist in radio, TV, concert hall and theatre. In 2014, he was awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council to fund a five-year project researching the twentieth-century reception of operettas from the German stage on Broadway and in the West End.

'… finally, a collection of essays published by Cambridge University Press makes some of these new debates [about operetta] available to an English speaking audience … a great overview of many new trends in scholarship … attractively packaged and priced.' Kevin Clarke, Operetta Research Center

• Introduction Anastasia Belina and Derek B. Scott; Part I. Early Centres of Operetta: 1. French operetta: Offenbach and company John Kendrick; 2. Viennese Golden-Age operetta: drinking, dancing and social criticism in a multi-ethnic empire Lisa Feurzeig; 3. London and Gilbert and Sullivan Bruno Bower; 4. Hungarians and Hungarianisms in operetta and folk plays in the late Habsburg and post-Habsburg era Lynn Hooker; 5. Operetta in the Czech National Revival – the Provisional Theatre years Jan Smaczy; Part II. The Global Expansion of Operetta: 6. Going global: the international spread of Viennese Silver-Age operetta Stefan Frey; 7. Spain and Zarzuela Christopher Webber; 8. Camping along the American operetta divide (on the road to the musical play) Raymond Knapp; 9. Operetta in Russia and the USSR Anastasia Belina; 10. Operetta in the Nordic countries (1850–1970) Pentti Paavolainen; 11. Operetta in Greece Avra Xepapadakou; Part III. Operetta since 1900: 12. The operetta factory: production systems of Silver-Age Vienna Micaela Baranello; 13. Berlin operetta Tobias Becker; 14. Operetta in Italy Valeria De Lucca; 15. Operetta in Warsaw Anastasia Belina; 16. British operetta after Gilbert and Sullivan Derek B. Scott; 17. Operetta during the Nazi regime Matthias Kauffmann; 18. Operetta films Derek B. Scott; 19. 'Jazz was the dynamite that exploded the harmlessness of the Viennese operetta!' (Interviewer: Ulrich Lenz.) Interview with Barrie Kosky.