Page 53 - 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
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operetta as safe space
They also celebrated another hot topic: gender nonconformity. If
Hortense Schneider as Boulotte in Barbe-bleue led the feminist revolution
against the patriarchy, operetta also celebrated cross-dressing and allowed
female performers to slip into a ‘macho’ role denied to them by society at
large. It also allowed men to cross dress (e.g. in Offenbach’s Mesdames de
la Halle, 1858) and explore a transgender and possibly homosexual side of
their personality in public that was criminalized elsewhere and only just
about tolerated in France.
The ever-present cross dressing links early operetta closely to bur-
lesque. While burlesque, in those years, was different to operetta because
it recycled existing music, whereas operetta offered new scores, the style of
performance and topics chosen were similar. In his essay “The New Taste
in Theatricals” William Dean Howell writes about burlesque and Lydia
Thompson visiting the United States with her British Blondes in the late
1860s:
Though they were not like men, they were in most things as un
like women, and seemed creatures of a kind of alien sex, parody
ing both. It was certainly a shocking thing to look at them with their
horrible prettiness.20
Burlesque has rarely been examined by operetta historians as a related
art form. Even though what William Dean Howell writes about burlesque
in the USA in 1869 is similar to what many others have written about op-
eretta in Vienna and Berlin, London and Paris at the exact same time. The
points Robert C. Allen makes in his book Burlesque and American Culture
in 1991 about gender ambiguity apply to operetta as well, and considering
that today we are discussing the question ‘What does it mean to be a Wom-
an?,’ or ‘a Man’ for that matter, more intensely than ever before in the wake
of the unfolding trans movement, it’s astonishing that operettas have been
completely excluded from these debates. And that applies also to research
into operetta’s role in LGBTIQ history.
The remarkable sexual liberty associated with operetta explains why
the new genre spread around the world like a wild fire, also to England. One
famous venue for Offenbach performances was the Alhambra, where Belle
Hélène was first presented in London. Kurt Gänzl writes:
The audience at the Alhambra was, like its stage, its auditorium
and its corps de ballet, a large one, with varying purposes in their
20 William Dean Howell, “The New Taste in Theatricals,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1869.
51
They also celebrated another hot topic: gender nonconformity. If
Hortense Schneider as Boulotte in Barbe-bleue led the feminist revolution
against the patriarchy, operetta also celebrated cross-dressing and allowed
female performers to slip into a ‘macho’ role denied to them by society at
large. It also allowed men to cross dress (e.g. in Offenbach’s Mesdames de
la Halle, 1858) and explore a transgender and possibly homosexual side of
their personality in public that was criminalized elsewhere and only just
about tolerated in France.
The ever-present cross dressing links early operetta closely to bur-
lesque. While burlesque, in those years, was different to operetta because
it recycled existing music, whereas operetta offered new scores, the style of
performance and topics chosen were similar. In his essay “The New Taste
in Theatricals” William Dean Howell writes about burlesque and Lydia
Thompson visiting the United States with her British Blondes in the late
1860s:
Though they were not like men, they were in most things as un
like women, and seemed creatures of a kind of alien sex, parody
ing both. It was certainly a shocking thing to look at them with their
horrible prettiness.20
Burlesque has rarely been examined by operetta historians as a related
art form. Even though what William Dean Howell writes about burlesque
in the USA in 1869 is similar to what many others have written about op-
eretta in Vienna and Berlin, London and Paris at the exact same time. The
points Robert C. Allen makes in his book Burlesque and American Culture
in 1991 about gender ambiguity apply to operetta as well, and considering
that today we are discussing the question ‘What does it mean to be a Wom-
an?,’ or ‘a Man’ for that matter, more intensely than ever before in the wake
of the unfolding trans movement, it’s astonishing that operettas have been
completely excluded from these debates. And that applies also to research
into operetta’s role in LGBTIQ history.
The remarkable sexual liberty associated with operetta explains why
the new genre spread around the world like a wild fire, also to England. One
famous venue for Offenbach performances was the Alhambra, where Belle
Hélène was first presented in London. Kurt Gänzl writes:
The audience at the Alhambra was, like its stage, its auditorium
and its corps de ballet, a large one, with varying purposes in their
20 William Dean Howell, “The New Taste in Theatricals,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1869.
51
