Of Gypsy Barons and the Power of Love: Operetta Programming and Popularity in the Postwar Soviet Union

Abstract

Abstract This article utilises a nearly unique collection of material (theatre box office data) and the reports of Soviet bureaucrats charged with overseeing musical theatre to analyse the programming and reception of operetta performed in the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1948, a period during which Soviet society shifted from world war to Cold War, and music, musical life and musical theatres underwent ideological scrutiny and endured intervention by the Communist Party’s Central Committee. It argues that although official programming and audience preferences were rarely in sync, their disjuncture followed a surprising pattern according to which Russian operetta-going audiences proved both more conservative and more patriotic than those responsible for the programming in operetta theatres. Marked differences between this Russian pattern and patterns observable in other republics – Ukraine gets particular attention – also attest to the diversity of taste and official ambitions for musical programming in the postwar Soviet Union.

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