Page 62 - 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. 62
opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
audiences tired from work and war, and tired of a constant confrontation
with Nazi symbolism. Goebbels wanted to reach them in a different way;
and he did. Audiences could also be sure that any sexual double entendre
in operetta would not lead to embarrassing situations; either for the char-
acters on stage or for the people in the auditorium. The new ideal was op-
eretta as ‘Singspiel’: with a ‘true’ German humor that could be found in the
comic operas of Albert Lortzing. In the 1939 Reclams Operettenführer Hans
Severus Ziegler recommends Lortzing’s Der Wildschütz as a role model to
strive for.
Meanwhile, in the US and UK, operetta had also become associated
with being ‘old fashioned,’ a nostalgic alternative to the up-to-date musi-
cal comedies of Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, and
later Rodgers & Hammerstein. That doesn’t mean they were unsuccessful:
Romberg’s The Student Prince was a massive hit on Broadway in the 1920s,
Ivor Novello’s and Noel Coward’s operettas were comparable hits in the
West End. But they now catered to a different audience.
A Most Ingenious Paradox: 1933 vs. 1945
With regard to Germany, it wasn’t until after 1945 that the full consequences
of the Nazi re-definition of operetta really hit, even though it is a common be-
lief that the radical changes befell the operetta industry in 1933. But that is
only partly true. Dagmar Herzog has written many books about sexuality
under German Fascism. In a small publication entitled Paradoxien der sex
uellen Liberalisierung she summed up her theory in 2013: “The whole era of
the W eimar Republic was reduced to sexuality. […] The image of Germany
as a hothouse of decadence and promiscuity between 1919 and 1933 was culti
vated.”30 The churches praised the new regime’s sexual politics in 1933, say-
ing “with one swipe everything changed in Germany, all the dirt and filth
(Schmutz und Schund) disappeared from the public eye.”31 But after only
two years Christian leaders were disappointed.
The specific innovation of Nazi sexual politics was the attempt to
combine the growing societal interest in sexual happiness with a
deeply anti-Semitic and in a wider sense racist – anti Roma and
Sinti, anti Slawic, anti handicap – and soon also massively homo
30 Dagmar Herzog, Paradoxien der sexuellen Liberalisierung [Hirschfeld-Lectures se-
ries] (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2013), 24.
31 Herzog quoting a Protestant church leader, page 24.
60
audiences tired from work and war, and tired of a constant confrontation
with Nazi symbolism. Goebbels wanted to reach them in a different way;
and he did. Audiences could also be sure that any sexual double entendre
in operetta would not lead to embarrassing situations; either for the char-
acters on stage or for the people in the auditorium. The new ideal was op-
eretta as ‘Singspiel’: with a ‘true’ German humor that could be found in the
comic operas of Albert Lortzing. In the 1939 Reclams Operettenführer Hans
Severus Ziegler recommends Lortzing’s Der Wildschütz as a role model to
strive for.
Meanwhile, in the US and UK, operetta had also become associated
with being ‘old fashioned,’ a nostalgic alternative to the up-to-date musi-
cal comedies of Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, and
later Rodgers & Hammerstein. That doesn’t mean they were unsuccessful:
Romberg’s The Student Prince was a massive hit on Broadway in the 1920s,
Ivor Novello’s and Noel Coward’s operettas were comparable hits in the
West End. But they now catered to a different audience.
A Most Ingenious Paradox: 1933 vs. 1945
With regard to Germany, it wasn’t until after 1945 that the full consequences
of the Nazi re-definition of operetta really hit, even though it is a common be-
lief that the radical changes befell the operetta industry in 1933. But that is
only partly true. Dagmar Herzog has written many books about sexuality
under German Fascism. In a small publication entitled Paradoxien der sex
uellen Liberalisierung she summed up her theory in 2013: “The whole era of
the W eimar Republic was reduced to sexuality. […] The image of Germany
as a hothouse of decadence and promiscuity between 1919 and 1933 was culti
vated.”30 The churches praised the new regime’s sexual politics in 1933, say-
ing “with one swipe everything changed in Germany, all the dirt and filth
(Schmutz und Schund) disappeared from the public eye.”31 But after only
two years Christian leaders were disappointed.
The specific innovation of Nazi sexual politics was the attempt to
combine the growing societal interest in sexual happiness with a
deeply anti-Semitic and in a wider sense racist – anti Roma and
Sinti, anti Slawic, anti handicap – and soon also massively homo
30 Dagmar Herzog, Paradoxien der sexuellen Liberalisierung [Hirschfeld-Lectures se-
ries] (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2013), 24.
31 Herzog quoting a Protestant church leader, page 24.
60
