komédia

Entertainment in Central Europe: The System of Roles as a Means to Standardization in Popular Musical Theater
Operetta was, with respect to the quantity of production and reception, the most important genre in central European theater of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The prerequisite for the mass production of operetta was a wide-reaching standardization in the construction of plots, the composition of librettos, and in musical practices. Central to this standardization were stock character parts that were used as bearers of the musical dramaturgy. The changes that the dramaturgy of operetta passed through in the course of these decades stand in immediate relation to the shifts in contour of relevant character parts and the development of new parts. This article sketches these relationships and focuses upon a role that was particularly important for the culture of the late Habsburg Empire, the role of the Jewish character.