French operetta after operetta, 1872-1900

通常来说，“法国轻歌剧”实际上就是“第二帝国”的同义词。即使在学术层面，这个术语在集体想象中也与雅克·奥芬巴赫和他的主要竞争对手埃尔韦从1858年到1869年的一小部分作品不可磨灭地联系在一起：其中包括奥弗斯·奥克菲尔斯、La Belle HéLène、La Grande-Duchesede Gérostein和Le Patit Fust。然而，在接下来的几十年里，我们通常会使用“轻歌剧”或“小歌剧”来创作舞台作品，假设传统是线性的、不间断的。这个全球联谊项目《法国轻歌剧后轻歌剧，1872-1900》(op-After-Etta)重新审视了1870年后法国轻歌剧的历史，提出了两个具有挑衅性的问题：(1)如果Fin-de-siècle‘轻歌剧’不是轻歌剧，会怎样？也就是说，如果《第二帝国》和后来的《轻歌剧》(都被归入opérette一词)之间的连续性是虚构的呢？(2)这部虚构的虚构是什么时候、由谁创作的，又是为什么？《第二帝国》是如何变成一部剧集的，以及后来的作品又是如何被融入一部以《第二帝国》剧集为起点的剧集历史中的？《之后的剧集》为以修正主义手法记述《第三共和国》头几十年的大部分法国戏剧奠定了基础。其方法的原创性有四个方面：它通过质疑传统的一般范畴并采用替代范畴来重新构建其研究对象。它将关注点从作者和个人作品转移到流派、机构和观众。它在“音乐剧”和“口语剧场”之间架起了桥梁，这种二分法与19世纪法国戏剧的现实格格不入。它摒弃了戏剧史作为戏剧史的传统观念，偏向于主张高雅艺术的作品，偏向后来被选为经典的作品，以及新作品而不是复兴作品。

In common usage, 'French operetta' is virtually synonymous with Second Empire opéra-bouffe. Even at the academic level, the term isindelibly associated in the collective imagination with a small number of works by Jacques Offenbach and his main competitor Hervédating from a short period of time, from 1858 through 1869: among others, Orphée aux enfers, La belle Hélène, La Grande-Duchessede Gérolstein, Le petit Faust. And yet we routinely use 'operetta', or opérette, for stage works of the following decades, assuming alinear and unbroken tradition. This Global Fellowship project, 'French operetta after operetta, 1872-1900' (OP-aftER-ETTA), reexaminesthe history of French light theatre with music after 1870, asking two provocative questions:(1) What if fin-de-siècle 'operetta' was not operetta? That is, what if the continuity between Second Empire opéra-bouffe and later'operetta', both subsumed under the word opérette, were a fiction?(2) When, by whom, and why, then, was this fiction forged? How did Second Empire opéra-bouffe become opérette, and how werelater works incorporated into a history of opérette that has its starting point in Second Empire opéra-bouffe?OP-aftER-ETTA lays the groundwork for a revisionist account of a large portion of French theatre in the first decades of the ThirdRepublic. The originality of its approach is fourfold: It reframes its very object of study by questioning conventional generic categories and adopting alternative ones. It shifts the focus away from authors and individual works, and towards genres, institutions, and audiences. It bridges 'musical theatre' and 'spoken theatre', a dichotomy that is at odds with the reality of nineteenth-century French theatre. It does away with traditional conceptions of the history of theatre as a history of drama, biased in favour of works with a claim tohigh art, of works later selected as canonical, and of new works as opposed to revivals.