Christopher Webber <[log in to unmask]>:

>Then there's Bruce's attempt to drive a wedge between 'Madam Butterfly'
>(which paradoxically does deal with ordinary people in ordinary situations,
>with a sad - not tragic - ending tacked on) and 'The Mikado', which
>features an omnipotent God-King in the cast as well as his aristocratic son
>and heir.  Gilbert's subject is public decapitation, and boiling in oil is
>nearly the fate of three of its major characters.

According to your standards "Dido and Aeneas" and "Tosca" would be works
with "sad- not tragic- ends".  Isn't the fact that the heroine ritually
cuts herself her throat with a dagger enough to declare a work as
"tragic"?.

>Katisha's anguished solo music gives her a depth of sympathy fully on
>a par with little Cio-Cio-San's pathetic end.  "The Sun Whose Rays" is
>technically as difficult for the soprano to sing well as "One Fine Day".

Sure.  "Light" doesn't means "easy to sing".  Any singer would base the
difference between opera and operetta on the ground of technical
difficulty.

>'Madam Butterfly' is an operetta with a sad ending, 'The Mikado' was
>described by its creators as a "Japanese Opera".

I know that it's politically correct nowadays no to insist too much on
that stuff of gender distinctions.  Personally I don't *always* believe
in them, but sometimes I do.  I don"t know really if The Mikado is "light",
but I hardly can conceive a more cruel and tragic ("heavy", if you want)
libretto than "Madame Butterfly".  I wouldn't call certainly "operetta" a
play in which the heroine in love is taken by her beloved just as a funny
exotic prostitute, a bride for joke, whose only alternative is the suicide
just before her child is took away by the betrayer and her "real" wife.
That's not a sad ending but a tragedy.  Opera is sometimes (but not always)
related to tragedy.  Operetta is never (or almost never) related to
tragedy.  I don't know if this argument works in order to trace a line
between both, but can you imagine Franz Lehar writing a vaudeville about
Medea or Oedipus?.

>In truth, I'm sure Bruce would agree that both these marvellous works
>stand on their own feet.  They blur generic distinctions, and labelling
>one "serious" and the other "light" (I'm no longer sure which is which!)
>is only apt to make newcomers approach them with unhelpful and potentially
>misleading preconceptions.

I got your point, and I agree.  But please, let's say at least that both
works are "serious"!!!

>In particular, the labelling of music theatre pieces involving spoken
>dialogue as, obscurely, less elevated artistically has resulted in many
>bizarre distortions.

Sure.  Those labellings have historical grounds, so they can be explained
as traditional distinctions rather than as intrinsec judgements of artistic
value.

>Does anyone give a pfennig whether 'Die Zauberflote' is called an opera
>or a singspiel? Is 'Fidelio' flawed by Beethoven's very conscious artistic
>decision not to through-write it? What favours does the no doubt strictly
>accurate but completely nonsensical labelling of 'Carmen' as an "Opera
>Comique" do anyone or anything?

True.  That's the part in which I begin to distrust gender distinctions.

Pablo Massa
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