4 | The American Musical

Throughout the ages and throughout the world, the theater has provided fertile soil for the growth of popular music. America, once the Puritan spirit had subsided somewhat, proved no exception. One of the main sources of modern American popular music can be located in the thriving New York theatrical scene in the decades around 1900. Then as now, the New York City theater district was located at, and known as, Broadway.

Broadway was first of all the home of operetta, a very popular European genre of light opera in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Operettas employ spoken dialogue (rather than recitative) between the musical numbers — light, attractive tunes with plenty of dances. Their plots are amusing and far-fetched. Typically they are set in some mythical eastern European country, where amorous, fun-loving aristocrats rub shoulders with merry, contented peasants.

Among the best European composers of operettas were Johann Strauss Jr., “the Waltz King” (Die Fledermaus [The Bat], 1874), and Arthur Sullivan (The Mikado, HMS Pinafore, and others; these are called “Gilbert and Sullivan” operettas as a tribute to the very witty librettist, W. S. Gilbert). The most important American composer in this tradition was Victor Herbert (1859–1924). Born in Ireland and educated in Germany, Herbert produced more than forty operettas from the 1890s on.