Page 390 - 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. 390
opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
es had become more accustomed to hearing and seeing more difficult plots
and not the light and sometimes superficial works that dominated the ear-
ly years of the productions in Maribor. There were certainly serious politi-
cal events during the inter-war years which must have affected the choice of
operas and operettas in both Ljubljana and Maribor. It is hardly a surprise
that Marij Kogoj’s Črne maske (Black Masks) was produced on 7 May 1929
and two of Slavko Osterc’s one-act operas on 27 February 1932.38 Even during
World War Two there were regular productions in Ljubljana but not Mari
bor, although by 1945 the appetite of the audiences for operetta had clear-
ly waned in both cities. The relatively few performances of operetta from
around 1945 would have consisted of nostalgic productions that recalled the
‘olden’ days of innocence. The Slovene audiences had become more sophis-
ticated in their preferences. One can with some justification mark out Ra-
dovan Gobec’s Planinska roža as the work that set Slovene operetta and op-
era on a new course, one that is indicated by the emergence of such Slovene
operas as those by Kozina, Bravničar and Pavel Šivic soon after the end of
World War II. Gobec had faced the political and social realities of the war
in his work with the Partisans. After the war he underwent a full musical
training and almost totally abandoned operetta as a type, concentrating on
opera as such, notably Kri v plamenih (Blood in Flames) of 1969 and sever-
al very impressive cantatas. In a sense he was now accepting the new situa-
tion in which operetta as he knew it was now inexorably being supplanted
by Musical Theatre, or in its universally employed term, The Musical, espe-
cially in its emergence in English-speaking contexts in Europe and the Unit-
ed States. From then on in Slovenia, operetta survived in a modest way as an
occasional light-hearted entertainment and a nostalgic reminder of the past.
Acknowledgement
The music examples are quoted by kind permission of Edicije DSS Ljublja-
na (www.dss.si).
Bibliography
Belina, Anastasia and Derek B. Scott, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Oper
etta. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Bower, Bruno. “London and Gilbert and Sullivan.” In The Cambridge Com
panion to Operetta, edited by Anastasia Belina and Derek B. Scott, 47–60.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
38 Moravec, Repertoar slovenskih gledališč 1867–1967, 223, 229.
388
es had become more accustomed to hearing and seeing more difficult plots
and not the light and sometimes superficial works that dominated the ear-
ly years of the productions in Maribor. There were certainly serious politi-
cal events during the inter-war years which must have affected the choice of
operas and operettas in both Ljubljana and Maribor. It is hardly a surprise
that Marij Kogoj’s Črne maske (Black Masks) was produced on 7 May 1929
and two of Slavko Osterc’s one-act operas on 27 February 1932.38 Even during
World War Two there were regular productions in Ljubljana but not Mari
bor, although by 1945 the appetite of the audiences for operetta had clear-
ly waned in both cities. The relatively few performances of operetta from
around 1945 would have consisted of nostalgic productions that recalled the
‘olden’ days of innocence. The Slovene audiences had become more sophis-
ticated in their preferences. One can with some justification mark out Ra-
dovan Gobec’s Planinska roža as the work that set Slovene operetta and op-
era on a new course, one that is indicated by the emergence of such Slovene
operas as those by Kozina, Bravničar and Pavel Šivic soon after the end of
World War II. Gobec had faced the political and social realities of the war
in his work with the Partisans. After the war he underwent a full musical
training and almost totally abandoned operetta as a type, concentrating on
opera as such, notably Kri v plamenih (Blood in Flames) of 1969 and sever-
al very impressive cantatas. In a sense he was now accepting the new situa-
tion in which operetta as he knew it was now inexorably being supplanted
by Musical Theatre, or in its universally employed term, The Musical, espe-
cially in its emergence in English-speaking contexts in Europe and the Unit-
ed States. From then on in Slovenia, operetta survived in a modest way as an
occasional light-hearted entertainment and a nostalgic reminder of the past.
Acknowledgement
The music examples are quoted by kind permission of Edicije DSS Ljublja-
na (www.dss.si).
Bibliography
Belina, Anastasia and Derek B. Scott, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Oper
etta. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Bower, Bruno. “London and Gilbert and Sullivan.” In The Cambridge Com
panion to Operetta, edited by Anastasia Belina and Derek B. Scott, 47–60.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
38 Moravec, Repertoar slovenskih gledališč 1867–1967, 223, 229.
388
