Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, and length of the work. Apart from its shorter length, the operetta is usually of a light and amusing character. The subject matter may portray "lovers' spats, mistaken identities, sudden reversals of fortune, and glittering parties". It sometimes also includes satirical commentaries.
Casanova often refers to Giacomo Casanova, an 18th-century Italian adventurer best known for his legendary womanizing.
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer. He is best known for his musicals and operettas, particularly The Student Prince (1924), The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928).
The White Horse Inn is an operetta or musical comedy by Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz in collaboration with a number of other composers and writers, set in the picturesque Salzkammergut region of Upper Austria. It is about the head waiter of the White Horse Inn in St. Wolfgang who is desperately in love with the owner of the inn, a resolute young woman who at first only has eyes for one of her regular guests. Sometimes classified as an operetta, the show enjoyed huge successes in the West End, as a Broadway version, and was filmed several times. In a way similar to The Sound of Music and the three Sissi movies, the play and its film versions have contributed to the popular image of Austria as an alpine idyll—the kind of idyll tourists have been seeking for almost a century now. Today, Im weißen Rößl is mainly remembered for its songs, many of which have become popular classics.
Ralph Benatzky, born in Mährisch Budwitz as Rudolph Franz [František] Josef Benatzky, was an Austrian composer of Moravian origin. He composed operas and operettas, such as Casanova (1928), Die drei Musketiere (1929), Im weißen Rössl (1930) and Meine Schwester und ich (1930). He died in Zürich, Switzerland.
Paul Abraham was a Jewish-Hungarian composer of operettas, who scored major successes in the German-speaking world. His specialty – and own innovation – was the insertion of jazz interludes into operettas.
Gustav Kadelburg was a Hungarian-German actor and dramatist. His greatest success came posthumously, the operetta version of his play The White Horse Inn.
Erich Karl Löwenberg, known as Erik Charell, was a German theatre and film director, dancer and actor. He is best known as the creator of musical revues and operettas, such as The White Horse Inn and The Congress Dances.
La Jana was an Austro-German dancer and actress.
Anni Frind was one of the most highly recorded lyric sopranos in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s.
Schauspiel Köln is a theatre and company in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It forms together with the Cologne Opera and other houses the Bühnen der Stadt Köln. The listed building has 830 seats in the Grand House, 120 in the locksmith and 60 in the refreshment room. In addition, the listed 'Halle Kalk' has 200 seats, it was used until closing in the summer of 2015 because of the danger of collapse. Since the 2013/14 season Depot 1 and Depot 2 have been used as interim venues during the extensive renovation of the Schauspielhaus on the site of the former Carlswerk in Schanzenstraße in Cologne-Mülheim.
Jerzy Fitelberg was a Polish-American composer.
Anny Ahlers was a German actress and singer. She was born in Hamburg.
White Horse Inn is the title of the Broadway version of the operetta Im weißen Rößl. The original operetta by Erik Charell and composers Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz was based on the popular farce of the same name by Oscar Blumenthal and Gustav Kadelburg. It was premiered at Berlin's Großes Schauspielhaus on 8 November 1930 and ran for 416 performances. The Broadway version was premiered on 1 October 1936 at the Center Theatre in New York City. It had a libretto by David Freedman and lyrics by Irving Caesar. The original score was re-orchestrated by Hans Spialek.
Jesse C. Huffman (1869–1935) was an American theatrical director. Between 1906 and 1932 he directed or staged over 200 shows, mostly for the Shubert Brothers. Many of them were musical revues, musicals or operettas. He is known for The Passing Show series of revues that he staged from 1914 to 1924 at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, daring alternatives to the Ziegfeld Follies.
Meine Schwester und ich is a musical comedy in two acts with prelude and postlude. Ralph Benatzky composed the music and also wrote the libretto together with Robert Blum. Benatzky based the work on a contemporary comedy by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil. The work was premiered on 29 March 1930 in Berlin, Germany, at the Theater am Gendarmenmarkt, also known as Komödie.
Dorothea Chryst, also Dorli-Maria Chryst is a German operatic and operetta soprano.
Ernst Welisch was an Austrian playwright and theatre director. He is primarily known for the numerous operetta librettos that he wrote for composers such as Leo Fall, Jean Gilbert, Emmerich Kálmán, and Ralph Benatzky. Welisch was born in Vienna, but spent most of his career in Berlin. In the 1930s he returned to Vienna where he died shortly before the premiere of his last work, Venedig in Wien.
RudolfSchanzer was an Austrian playwright and journalist. He is primarily known for the numerous operetta librettos that he wrote for composers such as Leo Fall, Jean Gilbert, Emmerich Kálmán, and Ralph Benatzky. He was born in Vienna and died in Italy where he committed suicide after his arrest by the Gestapo.
