page_title: Victor Herbert
section_title: Herbert's style
hierarchical_section_title: Victor Herbert / Works / Herbert's style
caption_attribution_description: A 1905 poster for Victor Herbert's The Fortune Teller (1898) showing the women's drum corps. Alice Nielsen's production was the first production of the opera; this poster comes a bit late for the original run, and so presumably comes from a touring or repertoire production by her company. Also, the file name is wrong: It should be The Fortune Teller, but... too late now, frankly, if we're going to keep the upload history. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
context_page_description: Victor August Herbert was an American composer, cellist and conductor of Irish ancestry and German training. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I. He was also prominent among the Tin Pan Alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. A prolific composer, Herbert produced two operas, a cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 plays, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions and numerous songs, choral compositions and orchestrations of works by other composers, among other music.
  In the early 1880s, Herbert began a career as a cellist in Vienna, Austria, and Stuttgart, Germany, during which he began to compose orchestral music. Herbert and his opera singer wife, Therese Förster, moved to the U.S. in 1886 when both were engaged by the Metropolitan Opera.
context_section_description: American musical theatre composers of the late nineteenth century tended to imitate either Viennese operetta or the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Many American theatre companies, such as The Bostonians, were established for the purpose of performing Gilbert and Sullivan's operas, such as H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado, and adaptations of Karl Millöcker's operettas, such as Der Bettelstudent, or Franz von Suppé's Boccaccio, all of which became popular in America. Herbert tailored his operettas to be performed by companies that performed these works.  His background made him intimately familiar with Viennese operetta. Indeed, the most characteristic Herbert song was the waltz, and many of his waltzes became highly popular in spite of their high musical demands.
  Herbert is also known for his "variation" songs, which consist either of a series of refrains displaying different styles, or of several variations of the same melody. For example, "Serenades of All Nations" from The Fortune Teller demonstrates serenades from colourful national traditions, sung and danced by a ballerina. "The Song of the Poet" from Babes in Toyland provides variations on the lullaby "Rock-a-bye Baby" by presenting it first as a brassy march, then in Neapolitan style, and finally as a cakewalk. The best of Herbert's operetta music is challenging, calling for trained singers. He often wrote his operettas with a particular singer in mind. During his career he had occasion to work with three great prima donnas: Alice Nielsen, Fritzi Scheff, and Emma Trentini. For them, he wrote leading parts in The Fortune Teller and The Singing Girl (Nielsen), Babette, Mlle. Modiste, The Prima Donna and Mlle Rosita (Scheff), and Naughty Marietta (Trentini). He would also write shows for popular comedians of the day or noted producers. Some of these were spectacular successes (The Red Mill, written for the comedy team of David C. Montgomery and Fred Stone, was Herbert's most financially successful show.), while others were dismal failures (When Sweet Sixteen, written for Joe Weber, who pulled out of the production, which lasted only twelve performances on Broadway.).
  Although Herbert had not been exposed to Gilbert and Sullivan before his arrival in the U.S. in 1886, their popularity led him to adopt some of their musical and dramatic sensibilities. An example of this is the quintet "Cleopatra's Wedding Day" from The Wizard of the Nile.  One of his early successes, The Serenade, borrows many of its situations from Ruddigore, Iolanthe and The Pirates of Penzance. The work's librettist, Harry B. Smith, went on to steal more Gilbertian ideas for future operettas with Herbert, who often would complement these ideas with music reminiscent of Sullivan. The Singing Girl, co-written by Smith and Stanislaus Stange, recalls The Mikado, and includes the plot element of a law against kissing without a licence.
  Herbert tended to use a slightly larger orchestra than Sullivan did in his comic operas, mostly through use of more types of percussion and occasionally by adding a harp. He generally wrote his own orchestrations, which were admired by music critics and other composers. In revivals of his works, however, new orchestrations have substituted saxophones and brass for strings. For many years, the only recording available of a Herbert show using his original orchestrations was one of Naughty Marietta, produced by the Smithsonian in 1981. Only recently have more recordings of his operettas appeared with the original orchestrations intact. These include Naughty Marietta, Mlle. Modiste, Eileen, Sweethearts and The Red Mill by Ohio Light Opera and The Fortune Teller by The Comic Opera Guild, which also has recorded numerous Herbert operettas live in concert with two-piano accompaniment.
  Like Sullivan, Herbert also frequently evokes and imitates music from distant places in his operettas. He uses elements of Spanish music in The Serenade, Italian music in Naughty Marietta, Austrian music in The Singing Girl and Eastern music in The Wizard of the Nile, The Idol's Eye, The Tattooed Man 
caption: The Fortune Teller drum corps
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