La fille de Madame Angot

Abstract

Abstract La fille de Madame Angot French operetta in the Netherlands in the 1870s: popular and contested In the second half of the nineteenth century, French operetta was one of the most popular genres of music theatre in Amsterdam and in the Netherlands. The comedic pieces written by composer Jacques Offenbach were by far the most popular, and his opéras bouffes have long determined the image of operetta in the nineteenth-century, but also in Dutch historiography. With the premiere of La fille de Madame Angot by Charles Lecocq in Amsterdam in 1873, a new subgenre of operetta – opéra comique – was introduced in the Netherlands. This article analyses the way in which this new form of operetta was introduced in Amsterdam, how it differed from operettas that had previously been popular in the Netherlands, and how it was received by audiences and critics that were already well-acquainted with earlier operettas.