# Operas vs. Musicals



## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

On another thread _(emphasis mine)_:



MAuer said:


> I love this version of Mozart's _La Clemenza di Tito_. One caveat: *the recitatives have been replaced by spoken dialogue*, which I know some people dislike. The setting has also been updated to 1930s Italy, but the staging is faithful to Mozart's intentions.





tyroneslothrop said:


> And then how is this different from a Broadway musical?





Aksel said:


> I doubt Jonas Kaufmann would appear in a Broadway musical. Although it could have been fun to see Broadway singers try to sing Parto parto or Non più di fiori.


This brings up an interesting point. What I was referring to is the semantical difference between an opera and a musical. For a long time, in my mind, I held the notion that the only semantical difference between the two is the recitative.

Put aside for the moment that arias *sound* different from Broadway numbers, the quality of the composers, and other metrics which are more reflective of one's sense of what is high culture and what is not than being truly objective, what do you people see as the fundamental different between these two art forms, if it isn't the recitative?


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

The German Singspiel operas -- i.e., _Die Zauberflöte_, _Die Entführung aus dem Serail_, _Fidelio_, _Der Freischütz_, etc. -- have spoken dialogue, not recitatives. So recitatives, by themselves, are not a defining characteristic of opera.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

MAuer said:


> The German Singspiel operas -- i.e., _Die Zauberflöte_, _Die Entführung aus dem Serail_, _Fidelio_, _Der Freischütz_, etc. -- have spoken dialogue, not recitatives. So recitatives, by themselves, are not a defining characteristic of opera.


OK, I know that they are recognized as genre of operas, but I have always argued that singspiel are not *true* operas, just like semi-operas such as the Fairy-Queen are not true operas either!


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

Interessant question! I wonder if musical is some sort of operetta and operetta some sort of opera... Perhaps all plays in music are the same.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Fred can never be called bald. Fred isn't bald now. However, if he loses one hair, that won't make him go from not bald to bald either. If he loses one more hair after that, this loss of a second hair also does not make him go from not bald to bald. Therefore, no matter how much hair he loses, he can never be called bald.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> Fred can never be called bald. Fred isn't bald now. However, if he loses one hair, that won't make him go from not bald to bald either. If he loses one more hair after that, this loss of a second hair also does not make him go from not bald to bald. Therefore, no matter how much hair he loses, he can never be called bald.


But the fallacy is that Fred has an infinite amount of hair to lose. But if the number of hairs is finite N, then there will N-1th hair, which will leave him with 1 hair. After he loses that one, then he will be bald. Therefore all musical theatre productions are the same! Q.E.D. ;-)


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

tyroneslothrop said:


> OK, I know that they are recognized as genre of operas, but I have always argued that singspiel are not *true* operas, just like semi-operas such as the Fairy-Queen are not true operas either!


An extraordinary opinion if nothing else---but naturally you are free to express it!!!


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Aksel said that he doubted that Mr.Kaufman would appear in a Broadway musical. I'm sure he probably would ,many opera singers have in the past.


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## Aksel (Dec 3, 2010)

moody said:


> Aksel said that he doubted that Mr.Kaufman would appear in a Broadway musical. I'm sure he probably would ,many opera singers have in the past.


There is certainly a possibility, I agree. I was just being tongue-in-cheek.
You often see opera singers in musicals, although mostly those of the more operatic variety. Nathan Gunn has been doing South Pacific, I think, and Deborah Voigt did Anne Get Your Gun a couple of years ago.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sorry, but it is all you set aside which makes the difference, the musical style, the singing style.

As in, for me, anyway when it comes to musicals, it boils down to "Where's the beef?"

'Operette / Operetta' are the European version of 'a musical' and the predecessors of British and American 'Musicals'

Nothing, if you think about it, is much more patently absurd, or clearly blown out of proportion, as that recording of West Side Story with its all star opera singer cast. About as ridiculous would be Rita Moreno singing La Boheme.

Style, both music and singing, are what distinguish them apart.


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Sorry, but it is all you set aside which makes the difference, the musical style, the singing style.
> 
> As in, for me, anyway when it comes to musicals, it boils down to "Where's the beef?"
> 
> ...


That's so sensible and well-argued. You seem to be right indeed.

(But I don't think that operetta is the european version of "musical", We have musicals in Europe.)


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Hesoos said:


> That's so sensible and well-argued. You seem to be right indeed.
> 
> (But I don't think that operetta is the european version of "musical", We have musicals in Europe.)


Sigh, history, dear. "Operette / Operetta" were first: the musicals you have now were composed post the first genre, Operette / Operetta.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

moody said:


> Aksel said that he doubted that Mr.Kaufman would appear in a Broadway musical. I'm sure he probably would ,many opera singers have in the past.


From what he has said about crossover music, I don't think Kaufmann would appear in a musical.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

What they have in common is they're both done by classically trained composers. So in musicals you get techniques from classical creeping in all the time (same with film music). They're become increasingly operatic over the decades. But I think now opera has quite a limited audience (museum piece?) and the musical genre's best days are over now as well. 

But Australian Opera company produces a musical as part of its season once a year. Eg. things like Showboat are now just as 'calcified' as operas of the early to mid 20th century (think Strauss or Puccini). They also do operetta - eg. Lehar, G&S (from which musicals sprang) - and one modern/contemporary opera per year. Apart from that, warhorses.

So today there's not much difference. Opera singers here do musicals. The composers of them are classically trained. The musicians in the pit likewise. The conductors as well.

& nobody mentioned that musicals, many of them have little or no spoken dialogue. Eg. Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar. They employ leitmotifs and are through-written. His biggest influence (or rip off?) was Puccini though. So he combined many things. But these days, nothing much out there is wholly original anyway (& what is originality, really?), so I think, if I enjoy it, so what?


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

My 4 years old daughter loves the musical The wizard of Oz (the Webber's version of the movie). She doesn't understand english but she tries to repeat and sing the songs. She listens to it in cd all day long, she likes too the overture. (She has listened to operas a little with me, some Mozart stuff and Serva padrona but she isn't so interested...) 

Anyone would recommend some musical of this kind?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

PetrB said:


> Sigh, history, dear. "Operette / Operetta" were first: the musicals you have now were composed post the first genre, Operette / Operetta.


How condescending,the problem is thst your post is either confusing or wrong.
I f you are saying that musicals have taken the place of operetta you are wrong anyway, Robert Stoltz was still composing operettas until fairly recently.
But apart from that the artists singing operetta are mostly fully-fledged opera singers, but most of them will not be appearing in "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" anytime soon.
i am aware that Ezio Pinza etc appeared in Broadway musicals but musicals and operetta are different genres.
If you happen to answer this do not address me as dear.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Hesoos said:


> My 4 years old daughter loves the musical The wizard of Oz (the Webber's version of the movie). She doesn't understand english but she tries to repeat and sing the songs. She listens to it in cd all day long, she likes too the overture. (She has listened to operas a little with me, some Mozart stuff and Serva padrona but she isn't so interested...)
> 
> Anyone would recommend some musical of this kind?


Mary Poppins?


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

Operas are musicals written by opera composers. If its a musical, but it was written by a composer who didn't write any operas than its just a musical, or at best an operetta. Hence Die Fledermaus & The Gypsy Baron are operettas, while Die Zauberflöte, Die Entführung aus dem Serail etc are operas. Beethoven wrote 1 opera, albeit a singspiel, so therefore Fidelio is an opera, not an operetta. Capisce?


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

one is limited to classical style. and the musical can use whatever it want.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

obwan said:


> Operas are musicals written by opera composers. If its a musical, but it was written by a composer who didn't write any operas than its just a musical, or at best an operetta. Hence Die Fledermaus & The Gypsy Baron are operettas, while Die Zauberflöte, Die Entführung aus dem Serail etc are operas. Beethoven wrote 1 opera, albeit a singspiel, so therefore Fidelio is an opera, not an operetta. Capisce?


You must have been joking  but if not--I don't buy it as this is a circular definition


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

LordBlackudder said:


> one is limited to classical style. and the musical can use whatever it want.


Well that doesn't work, because what is classical style and what happens when a musical uses a classical style as the "whatever it wants"?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

moody said:


> How condescending,the problem is thst your post is either confusing or wrong.
> I f you are saying that musicals have taken the place of operetta you are wrong anyway, Robert Stoltz was still composing operettas until fairly recently.
> But apart from that the artists singing operetta are mostly fully-fledged opera singers, but most of them will not be appearing in "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" anytime soon.
> i am aware that Ezio Pinza etc appeared in Broadway musicals but musicals and operetta are different genres.
> If you happen to answer this do not address me as dear.


Apologies to all for the 'dear.' Sometimes an habitual 'oh dear,' -- just as badly chosen I suppose -- gets written, but this 'dear' was clearly wrong and wrongly placed.

The post is a fail, _what I meant to get at_ cleared up by you. I did not at all mean to slam either genre, or fans thereof: wanted to clear up 'what they are and what they are called' -- and the fact they are quite different in approach and especially vocal style.

My failed intention was to mark that which you have -- an Operette and a Musical are different genres, with different stylistic aspects and with very different preference and expectation of the type of vocal delivery in one to the other.

[The fact that Fritz Wunderlich did both operetta and opera, or that John Reardon alternately transited from Musicals on Broadway (pre amplification era) to singing roles at the Metropolitain Opera -- he sings Nick Shadow in 'The Rake's Progress' recording with Stravinsky conducting -- says that any and all are possible for the highly trained fine and flexible singer.]

Well, you took care of that enough, I think


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Just adding this, even though I don't think it matters much, but anyway. Soprano *Marni Nixon *worked with many people, from lowbrow to highbrow to in between. Eg. Stravinsky, Robert Craft, Andre Previn, Andre Kostelanetz, Leonard Bernstein, Liberace, Victor Borge are some big names she worked with over her long career. She dubbed the voices of big parts in many film versions of musicals, eg. West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The King and I. She performed in opera of many kinds. She did what is considered to be among the best renditions of Ives' songs on record (I've got the EMI cd, but it was only a partial reissue of what was originally a 2 LP set, most people don't seem interested in this as much as they are in the latest recording of some warhorse we've heard like dozens of times before, but who cares). I can go on. She's a consummate musician, she has had praise from many greats in the industry. But not many people know her, or at least she's not been mentioned much or at all on this forum.

I personally don't care whether something as boxed or categorised as one thing or another. I may well be in the minority on this forum on that, which is understandable to some degree. But I know quite a few listeners personally who similarly just go with what they like, not whether it fits neatly into one box or another. That has never been of much use to me personally, but hey, its a free world, people can do as they please.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sid James said:


> What they have in common is they're both done by classically trained composers.


Hmmm. Tommy?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> Fred can never be called bald. Fred isn't bald now. However, if he loses one hair, that won't make him go from not bald to bald either. If he loses one more hair after that, this loss of a second hair also does not make him go from not bald to bald. Therefore, no matter how much hair he loses, he can never be called bald.


Yes,I'm sure you are right!


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Sid James said:


> Just adding this, even though I don't think it matters much, but anyway. Soprano *Marni Nixon *worked with many people, from lowbrow to highbrow to in between. Eg. Stravinsky, Robert Craft, Andre Previn, Andre Kostelanetz, Leonard Bernstein, Liberace, Victor Borge are some big names she worked with over her long career. She dubbed the voices of big parts in many film versions of musicals, eg. West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The King and I. She performed in opera of many kinds. She did what is considered to be among the best renditions of Ives' songs on record (I've got the EMI cd, but it was only a partial reissue of what was originally a 2 LP set, most people don't seem interested in this as much as they are in the latest recording of some warhorse we've heard like dozens of times before, but who cares). I can go on. She's a consummate musician, she has had praise from many greats in the industry. But not many people know her, or at least she's not been mentioned much or at all on this forum.
> 
> I personally don't care whether something as boxed or categorised as one thing or another. I may well be in the minority on this forum on that, which is understandable to some degree. But I know quite a few listeners personally who similarly just go with what they like, not whether it fits neatly into one box or another. That has never been of much use to me personally, but hey, its a free world, people can do as they please.


We may have different opinions about Marni Nixon, but that's not the point.
The original question was :"...what do you people see as the fundamental difference between these two forms..?"
As we see above there is a difference and certainly I think so, I can't stand musicals with their mostly brash screeching and yelling--but that's only my opinion which is probably wrong as many people do like them.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

moody said:


> ...I can't stand musicals with their mostly brash screeching and yelling--but that's only my opinion which is probably wrong as many people do like them.


Well some people on this forum have said the same thing, or similar things, about opera. Or other 'high art' things, eg. art song.

I think they are similar but also different. In terms of my taste, there are some things within each I like, some I don't like. Eg. in opera I don't like Wagner much. In art song I prefer Mahler and after, and generally French rather than in other languages. In musicals my taste is pretty broad, but I tend to prefer musicals that are like musicals, and not those type of transitional works that are between operetta and musical (eg. The Desert Song).

So basically for me its not the issue of one versus the other but more about what I like in each genre (or sub-genre) of stage/vocal works.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I think they are similar but also different.


Intuitively, I also acknowledge what seems to be the "obvious" _(to my senses)_ difference between operas and musicals. But how much of my sense of the difference is semantic and how much of it is an internal psychological bias for what "sounds" to my ears and "appears" to my eyes, more _sophisticated_ or of a _higher culture_?

Have any musicologists tackled this issue? Is there a definitive answer?


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

tyroneslothrop said:


> You must have been joking  but if not--I don't buy it as this is a circular definition


Yes, its a circular definition, but I think it sounds less 'snobbish' than "Opera is a musical with highly trained singers" or any other definition that you'd try to give it. Perhaps best it would be to use an exhaustive list of every 'real' opera ever written. Then the definition would be something like: "What is Opera? Its one of these........"


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

obwan said:


> Yes, its a circular definition, but I think it sounds less 'snobbish' than "Opera is a musical with highly trained singers" or any other definition that you'd try to give it. Perhaps best it would be to use an exhaustive list of every 'real' opera ever written. Then the definition would be something like: "What is Opera? Its one of these........"


My point here was not to be snobbish, but to try to understand why--in a way that feels more egalitarian--one thing is considered an opera and another thing is considered a musical. Your definition doesn't help there as an alien landing on earth could not use it to tell the difference between an opera and a musical, especially nowadays, with the advent of Regieoper. Half a century ago, we might have said tongue-in-cheek that operas were those things with the heavyset women wearing the horned helmets, carrying spears, and screeching, but that definition no longer works--or not much anyways!


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