leavethewoods replied to your post: Somebody on my Facebook feed just called Phantom an opera.
It’s an operetta. Quite frankly I think it should have ran in opera venues rather than monopolise Broadway for going on 27 years
First of all, the operetta/musical debate is basically a pissing match and about a zillion years old. While I totally agree about monopolizing Broadway, Phantom never could have run credibly in an opera house. The operetta is not a genre that is going to transform into something new; it already did that and that’s what we call the musical. If you’re going to call something an operetta, it needs to have all the traditional elements, i.e. a comic plot, stock characters, a general operatic style, and little dialogue. Candide is the most recent example I can think of. Phantom would be out on its plot alone, much less anything else. As much fun as the New York City Opera production of A Little Night Music was, I wouldn’t count it or Pacific Overtures as operettas either. Show Boat is like a half-operetta, but it can do that because it’s old.
