Bruce Alan Wilson <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>Christopher Webber seems to have forgotten or not noticed that I did
>say that I was not laying these things down as hard and fast criteria,
>but rather as things to look for.  There are certainly a great many works
>which are intermediate types, standing close to the border or even standing
>with one foot on either side.

Quite right. Hard cases make bad law.

Still ...  taken as a job lot Bruce's criteria, however carefully
formulated, clearly don't hold water when even "The Merry Widow" failed his
tests in at least three areas!  Why does anyone bother to "look for" these
sort of criteria anyway? Why not just take each piece on its own, unique
terms and ....  try listening to it?

It certainly helps to know something about the milieu in which musical
or theatrical works were created, but that's a different point.

I've been spending some time recently ploughing through earnest critical
essays trying to define not only zarzuela, but also its not so subtly
different flavours (genero chico, genero grande, revista, operone etc.
etc.) I can honestly say that not one of these attempts has cast so much
as one stimulating ray of light on one single zarzuela of my acquaintance
at least.

>There are, however, many more pieces which are firmly on one side or the
>other of the divide, and it would be more useful if we wish to develop
>criteria for defining the difference, to discuss what the works that are
>firmly on a given side have in common and what they do *not* have in common
>with those firmly on the other.

Yes, indeed.  The trouble is, that the pieces which are "firmly on one
side or the other" really aren't worth discussing in the first place
aesthetically, and to base "criteria" on their contents is to reduce both
opera and operetta to a sort of lowest common denominator.

Great stage works simply can't be pigeon-holed: that's what makes
them great.  And in its way "The Mikado" is every bit as great as "Madam
Butterfly" (Remember Ravel, who said something to the effect that one bar
of Chabrier's "Le Roi Malgre Lui" was worth the whole of "The Ring"?)

He meant no disrespect to Wagner in making this rather obvious point.
He was simply - and rightly - attacking the critics who patronised Chabrier
as an "operetta composer" without being able to define any meaningful
difference.

As to these non-existent differences, whether you called things operas or
operettas seems rather to depend on (a) which theatre you saw them in; and
(b) how high the ticket prices were.

Artistic differences? None at all.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"