Jewish Invention Myths: Operetta
It wouldn’t be a normal day at this point if I didn’t check a ‘jews invented X’ claim out and found it was a load of old hogwash. I used to assume these claims were made on some kind of basis of fact and broadly just accepted them, but as I’ve dug into them more and more, I have seen just how dubious, unfounded or just outright lies many of them are.
A good example of a dubious ‘jewish invention claim’ is the idea that jews invented the short form of light opera known as the ‘Operetta’ as a musical art form.
‘MNews’ claims that:
‘Jacques Offenbach – Operetta
Jacques Offenbach is one of the inventors of the most democratic genre of musical and theatrical art – operetta.’ (1)
This is true as far as it goes but is a significant overstatement as Offenbach – who incidentally converted to Roman Catholicism from Judaism and distanced himself from his Jewishness – did significantly help develop operetta after he acquired the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens in Paris in 1849 till operetta’s decline in popularity in the 1870s. (2)
However, Frenchmen (and Offenbach’s chief rival) Louis-Auguste Florimond Ronger aka ‘Hervé’ is generally credited as having invented and initially developed operetta with his 1842 ‘L'Ours et le pacha’. (3) Gammond however places its origins earlier (and Traubner broadly agrees) (4) and locates its origin in Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti’s ‘La Fille de Regiment’ which opened in Paris in 1840. (5)
So no jews didn’t invent operetta: Hervé or Donizetti did.
References
(1) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions
(2) https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/display/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000020386; Juliana Abreu, 2004, ‘The Origin and Development of French Operetta in the Nineteenth Century’, Published Masters Thesis: University of Wyoming, pp. 2; 5-12.
(3) Louis Biancolli, 1953, ‘The Opera Reader’, 1st Edition, McGraw-Hill: New York, p. 317; Gammond grudgingly agrees (Peter Gammond, 1986, ‘Offenbach’, 1st Edition, Omnibus Press: New York, p. 12) as does Richard Traubner, 2003, ‘Operetta: A Theatrical History’, 2nd Edition, Routledge: New York, pp. 5; 20; although with the qualifier that the term ‘operetta’ was in use before 1842.
(4) Traubner, Op. Cit., p. 20
(5) Gammond, Op. Cit., pp. 11; 31