Word: operetta
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...Brian, who established a reputation in musical comedy and operetta in such productions as "Buddies," "No Nanette," "The Chocolate Soldier," more recently in "Merry Widow," is confronted with the somewhat difficult of portraying the unsuccessful small time trooper and of enunciating, as convincingly as possible, the trite old them that no real actor can ever leave theatre. Considering the difficulties, portrayal of your true "down and outer is well done. He has achieved this beaten, despairing air which is typical of the breed. In addition, he gives impression of quiet power and earnestness which enable him to across a hard...
...piano the triumphant waltz-melody of "Zwei Herzen" comes to Toni while the arms of an unknown girl are resting on his shoulder. When he has played, and she has danced to his playing, she slips away. Without her, Toni cannot remember a bar of his waltz. The operetta is about to fail for want of it. But love finds out the way to the fraulein's heart, and hers joins with his to recall his "Zwei Herzen...
...century has passed. It is 1930 in Vienna; but now as of old, when friends gather and men make merry, there is dancing and singing to Schubert's song. Now a new Schubert sits at the open casement. It is Toni Hofer, writing the last measures of an operetta. On the piano, lilting melodies lie in manuscript, but the one crowning air will not come. The play is dead without a dance, a Viennese walse to give it soul...
...gayest of all gay musical films has come again to the Fine Arts Theatre. This German operetta, with its inexpensive sets, its modest casting, its imperfect sound-recording, carries exuberance and spontaneity unknown to Hollywood. American films may be suaver, better sung, more pretentious, but charm evades them. For charm is a volatile essence to which the American temperament and the Hollywood system of incubation remain unkind...
Donna Juanita, like Boccaccio, is the sort of operetta people enjoyed 50 years ago. It has a cluttered plot in which a French cadet (Jeritza) disguises himself as a woman, foils the British enemy and emerges a lieutenant. There are the usual marches, waltz tunes, love duets and. as in the remodeled Boccaccio, asides in colloquial English. Boccaccio was good for eight performances because the production was brisk, because earnest German singers looked funny cavorting about the stage, because light opera becomes the Viennese Jeritza. Donna Juanita should prosper briefly for the same reasons. The production is even faster, more...