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Abstract When thegrands opérasof Giacomo Meyerbeer were introduced to London audiences as a cluster in the mid-1800s, critics identified moments of understated musical and dramatic expression, and made little mention of more sensational dimensions, such as their impressive staging. With a focus on the 1849 staging ofLe Prophèteat the brand-new Royal Italian Opera in London, this article demonstrates that numerous critics were keen to endorse this new opera house, where most of the composer’s works were mounted, and that, to this end, they zeroed in on the most bare and restrained elements in his works so as to invest them with moral and intellectual relevance for Victorian audiences. ApproachingLe Prophèteas various London critics did is to see it anew and to consider alternatives to recent narratives which have taken material excess as a starting point for understanding the success of Meyerbeer’sgrands opérason the continent.

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Abstract Britten and Auden’s ‘choral operetta’Paul Bunyan, written in New York in 1939–41, has often been seen as out of touch with its American context and as an anomalous precursor to the triumphantPeter Grimes(1945). A closer look, however, suggests a more complex engagement with American musical life and with the problem of American operatic populism. Indeed, ifPaul Bunyanoffered one set of answers to this problem, toying with popular genres and smaller forms, the rejection of this approach inPeter Grimesalso seems tied to shifting American ideas about contemporary opera. Attention toPaul Bunyanin its American context highlights the transatlantic nature of both American and British operatic developments in the mid-twentieth century, while also recasting Britten’s operatic trajectory, restoring a sense of scepticism and uncertainty to his operatic project at its very beginnings.

Abstract Operetta held an ambiguous position within Nazi German entertainment culture: while suitably diverting and escapist, many of the most successful hits had Jewish authors and were thus increasingly avoided by theatre directors. To replenish the Reich’s performable repertory, Goebbels founded the ‘Reichsstelle für Musikbearbeitungen’, whose revisions of classical works including Handel’s oratorios and Mozart’s Da Ponte operas have been widely discussed. This article focuses on one of the institution’s many operetta commissions, Viennese satirist Rudolf Weys’s unfinished 1944 version of Franz Lehár’sDer Rastelbinder(1902), a box office success that featured an itinerant Jewish peddler as the central character. Weys’s revisions as well as his own story show that this kind of Reichsstelle commission could be a lifeline for artists who could not afford to attract attention or leave the Reich.

Abstract Franz Lehár’sDie lustige Witwe(1905) was conceived during a period of instability in both operetta and Viennese life. Considering the music and reception of bothWitweand some of its immediate, now-forgotten predecessors, this article argues that the operetta’s dramatic and musical dualism between urbane, Offenbach-like Paris and folksy, imaginary Pontevedro can be read both as a response to operetta’s conflicting priorities of satire and sentiment and as a depiction of the multi-ethnic world of working-class Vienna. The operetta’s unusual popularity, subsequent influence and exceptionally long performance history have tended to obscure these more immediate concerns.