As a legacy of the Habsburg Empire, performances of Jacques Offenbach's musical stage works played an important role in Budapest musico-theatrical life in the twentieth century. However, between the collapse of the Empire and the 1956 anti-Soviet revolution, political ideologies strongly influenced the character of these productions, when they took place. Public performances of Offenbach's works were prohibited between 1938 and 1945 and they became the bases for propagandadistic adaptations in the 1950s. This element explores how the local operetta tradition and the vogue of operettas featuring composers as characters during the interwar period were also important factors in how Offenbach's stage works were performed in mid-twentieth century Budapest in versions that sometimes bore little resemblance to the originals.

Global in scope and featuring thirty-five chapters from more than fifty dance, music, and theatre scholars and practitioners, The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre introduces the fundamentals of musical theatre studies and highlights developing global trends in practice and scholarship. Investigating the who, what, when, where, why, and how of transnational musical theatre, The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre is a comprehensive guide for those studying the components of musical theatre, its history, practitioners, audiences, and agendas. The Companion expands the study of musical theatre to include the ways we practice and experience musicals, their engagement with technology, and their navigation of international commercial marketplaces. The Companion is the first collection to include global musical theatre in each chapter, reflecting the musical’s status as the world’s most popular theatrical form. This book brings together practice and scholarship, featuring essays by leading and emerging scholars alongside luminaries such as Chinese musical theatre composer San Bao, Tony Award-winning star André De Shields, and Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus. This is an essential resource for students on theatre and performance courses and an invaluable text for researchers and practitioners in these areas of study.

During the 19th century, Italian opera became truly transatlantic and its rapid expansion is one of the most exciting new areas of study in music and the performing arts. Beyond the Atlantic coasts, opera searched for new spaces to expand its reach. This Element discusses about the Italian opera in Andean countries like Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia during the 1840s and focuses on opera as a product that both challenged and was challenged in the Andes by other forms of performing arts, behaviours, technologies, material realities, and business models.

Provides a fresh and global perspective on the works and influence of a nineteenth-century musical and theatrical phenomenon.

Leading scholars re-evaluate the opposition between Beethoven and Rossini, the great symbolic duo of early nineteenth-century music.

In the first third of the twentieth century, South America became the most important market for many European theatrical companies. When Italy found itself in various theatrical crises, Walter Mocchi created a transoceanic theatrical empire, using his business acumen to craft viable solutions. While his efforts were most visible in the sphere of opera, he played an extremely significant role in the promotion and circulation of popular forms of musical theatre (such as operetta) and staged world premieres of works by Italian superstars in Argentina (such as Mascagni's Isabeau), thus offering an early example of what Stephen Greenblatt calls 'cultural mobility'.

A collection of essays revealing how operetta spread across borders and became popular on the musical stages of the world.