CHAPTER 10 | MUSICAL THEATER AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 233
creative efforts of American composers. In 1911 the company presented Victor
Herbert’s Natoma, and also held a competition for an American opera, won by
Horatio Parker’s Mona, which was produced in 1912. In 1918 Charles W. Cadman’s
Shanewis, featuring American Indian melodies and based on a story involving
cultural confl ict, was successfully produced on the Met stage. None of these
works, however, won an enduring place in the repertory.
As the Metropolitan was staging the classical sphere’s most enduring musical
dramas, a more accessible kind of show scored a major success on Broadway. The
Merry Widow, a Viennese import by Franz Lehár, made its New York debut in 1907.
And now operetta—also called light opera or comic opera—became a signifi cant
force on the popular musical stage. Featuring singers trained for opera, elaborate
musical numbers, and plots carried by spoken dialogue, operetta was a European
form that settled easily into formula. Rudolf Friml, another leading operetta com-
poser, once said that the formula depended on “old things: a full-blooded libretto
with luscious melody, rousing choruses, and romantic passions.” The Merry Widow
had these ingredients, and American audiences took it to their hearts. Within a few
months of its New York opening, several road companies were playing Lehár’s work
on theatrical circuits, and its songs sold widely, both in recorded form—on cylinders,
phonograph records, and piano rolls—and as sheet music.
Irish-born composer Victor Herbert was one of the Americans who competed
successfully with the Hungarian-born, Vienna-based Lehár and the English
team of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, whose operettas had long been favor-
ites on the American stage. In his early years Herbert trained in Germany as an
instrumentalist and composer, playing cello in European orchestras and com-
posing classical works, earning the respect of his colleagues. He and his wife, an
opera singer, emigrated in 1886 to the United States, where they performed with
the Metropolitan Orchestra (she on stage and he in the pit), and Herbert later
taught at the National Conservatory alongside Dvorˇák. He took over Patrick S.
Gilmore’s band when the leader died in 1892 (see chapter 7), and later conducted
the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Herbert helped bring about changes in the
music business by working, along with John Philip Sousa, for the passage of the
1909 copyright law that secured composers’ royalties on the sale of recorded cyl-
inders, discs, and piano rolls. In 1914 he helped to found the American Society of
Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), an organization that to this day
ensures that composers are paid for performances of their music. And between
1894 and his death in 1924 he composed forty operettas.K Stranded in San
Francisco by the 1906
earthquake, some members
of New York’s Metropolitan
Opera Company try on
California hats for size.operettaVictor Herbert172028_10_231-253_r2_mr.indd 233 23/01/13 10:26 AM