Page 326 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2021. Opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama ▪︎ Operetta between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 5
P. 326
opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
Anxious to ensure the highest possible quality of performance, Brenčič
succeeded in engaging Andro Mitrović, then the manager of the Munci-
pal Theatre in Varaždin and one of the first professional musicians to join
the National Theatre in Maribor. In the 1923/24 season, Mitrović took up
the positions of chief conductor and manager of the opera company. His
first performance met with a positive reception, and the National Theatre
in Maribor benefited from Mitrović’s connections with the theatre in Za-
greb, since there was a great shortage of professional singers in Maribor.
One soloist who was particularly celebrated abroad for her performances
in the title role of Mam’zelle Nitouche and who came to Maribor as a guest
performer from the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb during Mitrović’s
reign as manager was Irma Polak, formerly a soprano at Vienna’s Theater
an der Wien.
Numerous criticisms of operetta: “a necessary evil”
Despite ambitions to stage more operas at the Maribor theatre, operas were
still outnumbered by operettas. Operetta, which in financial terms saved
many seasons at the Maribor theatre, was thus considered “a necessary evil”
by the opera managers of the time.6 Or as the then manager of the theatre
Radovan Brenčič put it:
[Operetta] provided the essential framework that allowed us, with
the help of one or two guests, to rehearse at least one opera per sea
son, except in those seasons when we hosted visiting productions of
the Ljubljana Opera.7
It should be pointed out here that not even operetta was complete-
ly immune to the advent of new media. One of the greatest dangers as re-
gards the decline in the theatre audience in that period was the ever-in-
creasing popularity of “talking pictures”. Evidence of this may be found in
the newspaper Mariborski večernik “Jutra”, in which the theatre manage-
ment warned that:
The introduction of mainly German talking pictures not only rep
resents serious and dangerous competition for the Maribor theatre,
6 l. l., “Andro Mitrović, ravnatelj opere v Mariboru (k 25 letnici njegovega dirigentske-
ga delovanja),” Slovenec 55, no. 115 (22 May 1927): 3, http://www.dlib.si/?URN=UR-
N:NBN:SI:doc-LVP6E4F3.
7 Radovan Brenčič, “Gospodarstvo mariborskega gledališča”, Gledališki list SNG v
Mariboru 14, no. 1 (1959/60): 8–9.
324
Anxious to ensure the highest possible quality of performance, Brenčič
succeeded in engaging Andro Mitrović, then the manager of the Munci-
pal Theatre in Varaždin and one of the first professional musicians to join
the National Theatre in Maribor. In the 1923/24 season, Mitrović took up
the positions of chief conductor and manager of the opera company. His
first performance met with a positive reception, and the National Theatre
in Maribor benefited from Mitrović’s connections with the theatre in Za-
greb, since there was a great shortage of professional singers in Maribor.
One soloist who was particularly celebrated abroad for her performances
in the title role of Mam’zelle Nitouche and who came to Maribor as a guest
performer from the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb during Mitrović’s
reign as manager was Irma Polak, formerly a soprano at Vienna’s Theater
an der Wien.
Numerous criticisms of operetta: “a necessary evil”
Despite ambitions to stage more operas at the Maribor theatre, operas were
still outnumbered by operettas. Operetta, which in financial terms saved
many seasons at the Maribor theatre, was thus considered “a necessary evil”
by the opera managers of the time.6 Or as the then manager of the theatre
Radovan Brenčič put it:
[Operetta] provided the essential framework that allowed us, with
the help of one or two guests, to rehearse at least one opera per sea
son, except in those seasons when we hosted visiting productions of
the Ljubljana Opera.7
It should be pointed out here that not even operetta was complete-
ly immune to the advent of new media. One of the greatest dangers as re-
gards the decline in the theatre audience in that period was the ever-in-
creasing popularity of “talking pictures”. Evidence of this may be found in
the newspaper Mariborski večernik “Jutra”, in which the theatre manage-
ment warned that:
The introduction of mainly German talking pictures not only rep
resents serious and dangerous competition for the Maribor theatre,
6 l. l., “Andro Mitrović, ravnatelj opere v Mariboru (k 25 letnici njegovega dirigentske-
ga delovanja),” Slovenec 55, no. 115 (22 May 1927): 3, http://www.dlib.si/?URN=UR-
N:NBN:SI:doc-LVP6E4F3.
7 Radovan Brenčič, “Gospodarstvo mariborskega gledališča”, Gledališki list SNG v
Mariboru 14, no. 1 (1959/60): 8–9.
324
