This introduction is based on our 2011 tour.

The selection of operettas in this tour spreads from the first glimmerings of the genre in the 1830s almost to the end of its career in the 1930s. It has been put together from the offerings of the leading three operetta festivals in Austria, the Léhar Festival at Bad Ischl, Operetta Sommer at Baden bei Wien and the Seefestspiele Mörbisch, an open-air theatre on Lake Neusiedl.

Though the form owes much to Paris, and particularly to Jacques Offenbach, operetta in Vienna and elsewhere in the Habsburg Empire grew out of the light-heartedness of the Biedermeier era between the Napoleonic wars and the 1848 revolutions. The distinct Viennese species acquired a defining feature with the importation of dance, a grafting administered by the ‘Waltz King’ Johann Strauss himself.

The irresistible, voluptuous and romantic sound, rich in melody, was applied to libretti with clever plots, witty repartee and heart-string-tugging sentimentality. Together with the glamorous and Ruritanian worlds which are the standard mise-en-scènes, Viennese operetta is undeniably escapist and nostalgic. For all its frivolity and jollity, operetta flourished at a time of great social, political and artistic upheaval – and indeed blithely carried on during the First World War. In its Austrian heartland, operetta is still very much part of the living culture, continuing in its traditional guise with no nonsense about modern dress and the quest for contemporary relevance, and successfully suppressing directorial ego.

Read the example itinerary from 2011