There's no such thing as operetta!

by Joshua Gailey

Promotional poster for The Pirates of Penzance, c. 1880.
Source: The Library of Congress.

There’s a famous aphorism attributed to the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould: “there’s no such thing as a fish.” Though provocatively phrased, Gould’s point is simple: despite the usefulness of the term in our everyday lives, there is no strictly biological definition of what constitutes a fish. From an evolutionary perspective, some of the creatures we call “fish,” like starfish or jellyfish, have less in common with salmon than camels.

The same might be said of musical genres. We put a lot of stake in genres: they influence our personalities, the friends we hang out with, the clothes we wear. While we may know better than to judge a book by its cover, we gladly judge it based on its genre, especially when it comes to “low” ones like romance or horror. But when you start looking more closely, it becomes difficult to tell where the line should be drawn between this genre and that.

The works of Gilbert and Sullivan, paragons of operetta, are a perfect example. Literally “little opera,” operetta has long been maligned as frivolous, amateur, or inconsequential compared to its more “respectable” cousin. Gilbert and Sullivan themselves were aware of these associations and thus avoided using the term, preferring to call their works either “comic operas” (evoking more artistic aspirations) or “Savoy operas” (in a savvy bit of branding promoting the Savoy Theatre where they were performed). Composer Arthur Sullivan was especially bothered by operetta’s reputation among the elite, and later in his career turned, quite unsuccessfully in the eyes of critics, to grand opera and oratorio, then the most prestigious genres in England.

The Savoy Theatre in London, where many of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas were premiered.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The operetta craze

It’s only in retrospect that the term “operetta” has been applied to Gilbert and Sullivan, to place their works in a lineage of theatrical spoofs from the last half of the 19th century that mocked opera itself. The term originated in Paris in the 1840s, when a musician known as Hervé began producing little one-act burlesques he called vaudevilles-opérettes and parodies-opérettes. The genre as we know it, however, coalesced with Jacques Offenbach, who in 1855 started referring to his immensely popular parodies, like Orpheus in the Underworld (1858), as opérettes. This was a time when opera was becoming increasingly pompous—think of the imposing music dramas of Richard Wagner, the hulking grand operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer, or the ambitious tragedies of Giuseppe Verdi. Operetta mocked these works mercilessly, taking aim at their contrived plots, their tedious conventions, and, above all, their flamboyant self-importance.

Seattle Opera's 2006 production of Johann Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus.
Photo: Rozarii Lynch.

It was a winning formula. Offenbach’s nearly 100 operettas sparked a flurry of imitations, and soon enough new epicenters for operetta cropped up across Europe. The first was Vienna, where composers like Franz von Suppé and the “Waltz King,” Johann Strauss, developed their own Viennese versions, called komische Operette. Some of these pieces, like Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (1874), are still frequently seen on opera stages. The second, of course, was London, where in 1875 the impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte commissioned William S. Gilbert, a staff writer for Fun magazine (a sort of Victorian equivalent of Mad magazine), and Arthur Sullivan, director of the school that later became the Royal College of Music, to create a one-act operetta, Trial by Jury, to pair with Offenbach’s La Périchole.

Opera vs. operetta

So what sets operetta apart from opera? Well, much like for Gould’s fish, it’s tough to come up with universal truths. One might say operetta’s mixture of tunes with spoken dialogue makes it unique; but then what do we make of Carmen or The Magic Flute, which feature the same? Perhaps it’s that operettas are shorter than operas, or less serious in tone? No, Pagliacci clocks in 15 minutes shorter than The Pirates of Penzance, and The Barber of Seville is just as goofy. Surely, then, it’s the fact that operetta takes opera itself as its subject of parody? Yet even here there’s precedent in the very origins of comic opera in the early 18th century, when little spoofs on opera called intermezzi (like Pergolesi’s La serva padrona from 1733) were peppered in the breaks between acts of a serious opera.

If there’s one characteristic that might hold true, it’s that operetta was more nakedly commercial than 19th-century opera. While Verdi and Wagner were writing increasingly complex music for state-sponsored (or eventually, in Wagner’s case, personal) theaters, operetta played in for-profit houses with promotional tie-ins and catchy tunes that aimed shamelessly for the sheet-music market. This legacy of commercialism is continued by the American musical, for which operetta, and especially Gilbert and Sullivan, provided the blueprint.

Sheet music, like this arrangement for solo piano of tunes from The Pirates of Penzance, was the primary way music spread commercially in the 19th century.
Source: The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive.

Ultimately, opera and operetta (and the musical, for that matter) are not all that different. Each tells stories on stage through music, and it’s equally common these days to see operettas produced at opera houses or commercial theaters. Thinking about genre helps us understand the contexts in which these works were produced, but we shouldn’t allow the baggage that comes along with it to dictate our listening habits. Opening our ears to the connections between musical traditions reveals a deeper appreciation for how art creates meaning in our lives. After all, there are many fish in the sea—no matter what we call them.

Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance is on stage October 18–November 1, 2025 at McCaw Hall. Learn more and buy tickets at seattleopera.org/pirates.