GAUDIGUAD

Opera Order

In 1855 Jacques Offenbach was granted the privilege of founding the "Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens". This was connected with the obligation to design the stage works in a simple and tight manner. Offenbach actually remained the only representative of his new genre of opera, which was characterized by fresh personal, musical and dramaturgical simplicity as well as bubbly and lively, sometimes also suggestive humor and, with some ecstatic and rumbling dances such as the popular and famous can-can, so to speak, let the cow fly. In addition, their trademarks were the parody of existing operas, which are quoted again and again in Offenbach's works or included with allusions, and fair theater sensations such as harlequinades or pantomimes.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the operetta replaced the Opéra bouffe. The opera was not only verbally diminished, but also further simplified in terms of its scope and its musical and dramaturgical complexity. - You don't have to write anything else.

The Singspiel, which existed in simple forms centuries before, was now the German-language answer to the French Opéra-comique in the eighteenth century and developed it further. Originally, like the Comédie en Vaudeville in France, it was bourgeois and funny. During the period of the Viennese Classicism (around 1779 to 1825), to which the composers Joseph Haydn (1732 to 1809), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 to 1791) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 to 1827) belonged, Emperor Joseph II promoted ( 1741 to 1790) the Singspiel in particular, who wrote the guidelines for it, founded the Vienna National Theater in 1778 and selected the actors for the first opera "Die Bergknappen" (world premiere Vienna 1778) by Ignaz Umlauf (1746 to 1796). In the bloom of Mozart's operas such as "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" (world premiere Vienna 1782) or "Die Zauberflöte" (world premiere Vienna 1791) the Singspiel far exceeded its former framework and culminated in a unique art form. The songs were no longer performed by actors, but by opera singers. And now there was also an orchestral music number that preceded the Singspiel, the so-called overture.