Operettas Galore!

Is three "galore?"  Well, somehow these are piling up without me writing about them, so I thought I'd take the chance now.  All three of these were written within a nine-year period, so they seem to fit together.

Johann Strauss II, Der Zigeunerbaron (1885)

I'm kind of interested by the extent to which operettas often take place in historical situations that would not on the surface appear particularly operetta-y.  This is set in Hungary in the eighteenth century, over various political goings-on that I don't one hundred percent remember, but the upshot is that there's this Barinkay guy who's just returned from exile.  There's a woman he's smitten with, but she won't marry him as he's not a noble (that's just her excuse; she's actually involved with someone else).  By a mechanism which I don't think is very well-explained, a band of Gypsies acclaim him as their leader, so now he calls himself a "Gypsy Baron" (Zigeunerbaron), but in the meantime, he's fallen in love with one of the Gypsies, so his previous infatuation is no longer operative.  But when it turns out that the woman he's in love with is an ACTUALLY noble, secretly (as people are), he doesn't feel like he be with her, 'cause he's not.  But then everyone goes off to war (?), and when they come back as heroes, he becomes an actual baron--though he explicitly declares that since the Gypsies are the ones who helped him, he's really spiritually still a Gypsy Baron.  It's very sympathetic to the Gypsy characters, which is the case more often than not in opera--I think probably when we in the US think of the word as a racial slur, while we're not exactly wrong, at the same time we're trying to put an American lens on a European issue--picturing Romani people as exactly equivalent to blacks in the US, which probably obfuscates more than it clarifies.  At any rate, everyone ends up happy.  What a surprise!

Carl Zeller, Der Vogelhändler (1891)

Again in the eighteenth century, this bird-seller (Vogelhändler) wants to marry his sweetheart but hasn't the money.  But then through various contrivances he comes to labor under the misapprehension that she was having an assignation with another man and gets mad.  Obviously, things ultimately work out, though I do have to admit, even though he's obviously going to become non-jerkish in the end, his jerkishness while he's jerkish does seem perhaps a bit overly extreme.  Obviously, this is a very basic description, and there is A LOT of extra frippery.  But you know the kind of thing you're gonna get, dangit!

Carl Millöcker, Der Bettelstudent (1882)

Again in the eighteenth century!  Why is that when we always are?!  In Poland this time, under Saxon occupation.  The Saxon colonel is miffed because a Polish countess, Laura, whacked him with a fan after he "kissed her shoulder," which may be fairly mild as sexual harassment goes, but come on, a fan attack is a pretty mild punishment.  But he's mad, and wants REVENGE.  The countess's family is poor, so his dubious plan is to get some poor Polish students who are prisoners and doll them up like rich people, and one of them will marry Laura (their family has fallen on hard times and desperately needs money), and then...something.  Presumably.  So the one student pretend to be a rich guy and the other his chamberlain.  Obviously, they both fall in love, the one with Laura and the other with her sister, and it turns out one of them is a secret agent from the Polish liberation movement, yadda yadda, and ultimately, they get rid of the Saxons and everything's cool.  And Laura would be willing to marry the bettelstudent in spite of his being a bettel, but then he gets made a count for helping with the movement.  Although still poor, presumably.  Laura was still poor even though a countess.  So who knows what's gonna happen with them, but there you are.

Obviously, Strauss is by far the best known of these composers; Zeller and Millöcker are kind of one-hit wonders.  And yet, I'm not at all convinced I would be able to distinguish between the three just based on their music.  Which is good!  I like it!  Which of these did I like best?  Um...I'm pretty sure I would always just say that the one I saw most recently.  Which in this case is Der Bettelstudent, so take that for however little it's worth.  There are a few love duets here that are worthy of Puccini.  Operetta writers are unfairly disparaged.  These are all Seefestspiele Mörbisch productions (we'd actually have very few operettas on video if not for this festival), so the productions are all comparable qualitywise (and they're all performed outside and they all end with a fireworks display--how magical would it be to see that in person?).  Really, you won't be disappointed no matter which way you go.