An Introduction to America’s Music

234 PART 2 | FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORLD WAR I

If opera belongs to the classical sphere and musical comedy and revue to

the popular, operetta lands somewhere in between. Like musical comedies,

operettas depend on speaking, not singing, to carry the plot—usually involving

high-born characters who search for true love and fi nd it. Yet operetta takes its

emotional tone and vocalism from opera. The characters reveal that they are

living in an exalted state by singing songs, duets, and choruses built around

ringing high notes: proof of their ardent passion. Victor Herbert could write an

operetta in 1910 (Naughty Marietta) and an opera in 1911 (Natoma) without making

any radical change in his musical style.

Naughty Marietta fi ts Friml’s list of ingredients perfectly: old things (it is set in

1780s New Orleans), a full-blooded libretto (Marietta, a disguised noblewoman,

fi nds her lover through music), luscious melody (“I’m Falling in Love with Some-

one,” “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life”), rousing choruses (“Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,”

“The Italian Street Song”), and romantic passions (a jilted mixed-race beauty’s

plight exposes Louisiana’s racial caste system).

Naughty Marietta opens at dawn on the central square of New Orleans. To hear

the city wake up in Herbert’s orchestration is to realize that he was a master of

orchestral effect (his mastery is also apparent in his two cello concertos). More-

over, one vocal number in particular points up his ability to bring musical rich-

ness into comic opera without sacrifi cing immediate appeal. “I’m Falling in Love

with Someone,” a tenor song in waltz time, begins with a verse that could almost

be that of a popular song, but the chorus moves quickly into deeper waters,

including some bold melodic leaps, high tenor notes, and fl exible tempo. The

message of this theatrical love song may be intimate, but the chorus’s journey

from quiet midrange to ringing climax is a reminder that it was written to be felt

in the farthest reaches of the hall.

Operetta remained popular on the Broadway stage through the 1920s, whether

composed by Europeans like Lehár or Oscar Straus (The Chocolate Soldier, 1908), by

the occasional native-born American like John Philip Sousa (El Capitan, 1896), or by

European-born Americans like Herbert, Rudolf Friml (The Firefl y, 1912; Rose-Marie,

1924; The Vagabond King, 1925), or Sigmund Romberg (The Student Prince, 1924; The Des-

ert Song, 1925; The New Moon, 1928). After their initial runs on Broadway, several oper-

ettas were adapted as successful fi lms in the 1930s and 1940s, some starring Nelson

Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. The best operettas also enjoyed long lives in both

amateur and professional productions, tapering off in popularity only in recent

decades. Even in its heyday, however, operetta shared the public’s affection with its

more informal cousins, musical comedy and revue.

MUSICAL COMEDY

Just as they had in the eighteenth century, British imports dominated the

American stage throughout the nineteenth century. And just as the old-fashioned

ballad operas had given way to the newer operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, those

operettas by the 1890s were beginning to be eclipsed by a new style of direct-

from-London entertainment: the musical comedy. Two things distinguished

this new genre from the operetta. First, its settings and characters were contem-

porary. Instead of romantic nobility in faraway kingdoms, musical comedies fea-

tured well-to-do but not necessarily aristocratic young people whose romantic

entanglements occurred in familiar settings, or at least what middle-class audiences

Naughty Marietta

Sousa, Friml, Romberg

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