Operetta: Rare and Well Done

Show Description:

Since the earliest days of operetta, historical figures—famous and infamous—have served as inspiration for characters, plots, songs, and shows. The stage counterparts of these figures—from Cleopatra to Casanova, Madame Pompadour to Napoleon, Boccaccio to Goethe—have provided us history lessons, but tempered with the satirical, romantic, and glamorized stylings of operetta. OLO has taken advantage of the inactivity during the COVID crisis to craft, and secure materials for, a live-streamed concert titled Operetta: Rare and Well Done, comprising 13 songs associated, in one way or another, with historical personages. Our goal—as with The Daring of Diane—is to chip away at those 10,000 operetta titles that OLO has yet to present on stage. Composers represented include Jacques Offenbach, Franz von Suppé, Arthur Sullivan, and George Gershwin. The historical characters range from queens to sculptors to actors to composers. Make no mistake … these songs, drawn from the French, German, British, and American repertoire, are rare! But you will be humming or knee-slapping the tunes for days.