Gems from Olivette: The Sexual Politics of French Operetta

Produced by University of Tampa faculty from the disciplines of History and Music, this film is part of a larger project on the history of popular entertainment. This unique collaboration between the Henry B. Plant Museum, professional scholars, and performing arts students combines archival research with historically informed performance to recover forgotten artistic works and to examine their significance in Gilded Age America.

 

SYNOPSIS

Premiering at the Theatre des Bouffes-Parisiens in 1879, Edmond Audran's The Marriage of Olivette (or, simply, Olivette) achieved incredible success the next year in London and New York. On February 16, 1887, shipping and railroad entrepreneur Henry B. Plant christened his newest steamship the S.S. Olivette after the famous operetta. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, traveling comic opera companies performed Olivette to packed houses in cities across the United States.

 

Despite the popularity of Olivette and other works by French composers, the genre became part of a culture war in Great Britain and the United States. French operettas combined sexually-charged situations and lyrics with scores that embraced polkas, galops, and waltzes; this proved a recipe for success in attracting working-class and elite - particularly elite male - audiences. Still, censorship tempered H.B. Farnie's English translation of Olivette's libretto, and middle-class moralists criticized the revealing costumes and supposedly leud gestures of performers.



Gems from Olivette: The Sexual Politics of French Operetta draws inspiration from an actual performance of Olivette by the Wilbur Opera Company at the Casino of the Tampa Bay Hotel on January 27, 1898. The film imagines that the theatrical troupe's principal players offered a sneak peek of popular songs from the evening's program to hotel guests in the lavish Music Room. The film combines costumed reenactments, archival images, and expert commentary to explore the tensions in American popular culture at the end of the nineteenth century.

Learn the plot of Olivette in a narrated live performance of the film's songs, "Gems from Olivette: The Staged Concert."