I personally believe the lines between musicals and operas are very blurred - it's more like a kind of continuum, with "musicals" at one end, and "operas" at the other... and a lot of common ground in the middle.

Mozart, of course, wrote musicals.  "The Magic Flute", "The Escape from The Seraglio", "Bastien & Bastienne" - are all musicals, and Mozart carefully called them "Singspiel" and not "Opera".  There is, however, a certain kind of prig who will say he/she knows better than Mozart himself about what to call the composer's works

It's worth looking at the technical differences for any worthwhile discussion, however, and avoiding getting caught-up in mere semantics and cant.

The principle difference I'd point to between the genres is that in operas (or at least, in well-written operas), the music carries the action forwards.  In musicals, by contrast, the music tends to provide a commentary on the action - and in poorly-written musicals, does so at the expense of the action, producing a turgid and lumpy plot which limps along between the musical numbers.

Let me give some concrete examples of what I mean here (many of which are well-worn, so I apologise in advance for that - it doesn't make them less apposite).  Let's look at musicals first.

LES MISERABLES is a well-known musical. However, it would be hard to point to moments in its score when you could say "we know more about this man/woman because of the music".   A rather typical instance is Jean's song "Empty chairs at empty tables" - he simply tells us this was the place where they planned revolution in former days... but apart from a rather maudlin connivance at our sympathies, nothing new comes-out in this "big number" at all.   Something slightly different happens with "Master Of The House", which is another common problem with musicals...  the more jokey and tricksy characters come-over rather better than the deeply-moral heroes like Jean Valjean... the landlord confesses privately how he diddles the customers in an alarming variety of different ways.  We never get to know nearly so much about our "hero" Jean, unfortunately.   Probably the best-written of the numbers in Les Mis is "On My Own" - a girl lets out all the anguish of unreciprocated love, and we do actually find out something which wasn't clear from the spoken dialogue (and without this number, could only have been indicated through some good staging & acting).  The major fault in Les Mis, however, is that the main crucial action moments in the plot aren't sung - they take place against some background music. 

Let's compare this with something a bit more advanced. Sondheim's SWEENEY TODD is unashamedly a musical - Sondheim's own titling for the piece.  (This hasn't dissuaded the Royal Opera from staging it to great success). But compared with Les Mis, there are extensive multi-part musical scenes and ensembles which carry the action forward, rather than halting it for "commentary".  For example, "Seems a downright shame... seems an awful waste?" starts with the idea of the unwanted bodies being a bit of a "waste",  but by the end Sweeney and Mrs Lovett have entered wholeheartedly on their pact to murder Sweeney's customers for use in meat pies...  even going on to a discussion about whether lawyers, priests, poets, Royal Marines, tinkers, tailors, butlers or locksmiths make the best eating?    Move on to Sondheim's PACIFIC OVERTURES, and the lines are now so blurred I'd say you were in the realm of opera?

Let's move over to the "other side" - where is the dividing line?  Operetta is one possible answer, of course... but really we ought to be looking for "action carried forward through the music" here too.   And in the best operetta, we find it quite easily...   look at the immense Act One Finale of THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE?  The police are shown-up as being fuller of words than action, Major-General Stanley's daughters vainly try to spur them into action with the carrot of everlasting glory and the stick of cowardly shame ("Go ye heroes, go to glory! Though you die in combat gory!  Ye shall live in song and story! Go to glory and the grave!"),  with Sullivan's inspired Verdian-spoof overlaying of one theme over the other.

Menotti's operas have at least half a foot in the world of the musical... dividing-down rather too easily into "set piece" numbers that leave us wondering where this all going?  However, he still avoids the charge of playing on mere sentiment by revealing at least some character-traits which weren't immediately apparent.   In "Monica's Waltz" in THE MEDIUM, we initially seem to be in some kind of "musical number" which is just gratuitous music...   but slowly the waltz gets out of control, as Monica reveals what seems to be a sexually-motivated crush for the much-younger Toby...  "fall in my aaaaaaaaaaaarms!"....  and the waltz comes to a crashing halt.  You couldn't easily do that in a "straight" musical.

In "true operas", of course, revealing aspects of character through their music  (the famous opening duet in FIGARO in which Susanna comes-out as being sharper than Figaro,  because Figaro's tessitura leaves him plodding below her higher-flying soprano line...  the same idea appears in the Pamina/Papageno duet,  the Zerlina/Masetto duet etc)...   and in full musical scenes in which essential elements of the plot occur  (the accidental shooting in FORZA, the execution scene in MAZEPPA, the burning of JOAN OF ARC, and a thousand other examples).

In terms of the size of the intended market, there is a palpable difference, though there is indeed a continuum.


All written for the early bourgeoisie of late 18th-century Vienna, Prague, etc. 20th century writers of musicals aim at a much larger constituency.


Depends which type of music and at which point in operatic history. Even in Mozart's Italian operas, there remains a distinction between drama carried forward by the recitatives and the crystallisation of emotions, states, etc., in arias, with duets and ensembles occupying a position somewhere in between, though sometimes this distinction becomes blurred (as with the two arias for the Don in Don Giovanni, the first of which is static, the second dramatic). Throughout much 19th century Italian opera there are many static numbers which are not about progressing the action forwards; only with Wagner (and to a lesser extent Bizet, and later Puccini) is this dichotomy really transformed.

Anyhow, the important point about the distinction (between operas/musicals) is that it has to do with the relationship between commercial interests and the music that best satisfies them, rather than so much about particular genres. There was a great deal of awareness of the changing nature of such things in the early 19th century, with for example the shift from Rossini to Bellini and Donizetti (Liszt wrote about such a thing in letters to George Sand - he was distinctly unimpressed, though he still went on to write numerous transcriptions of the latter two composers) and the new tradition of grand opera in Paris, more specifically targeted at the newly confident bourgeoisie than had previously been the case with opera. But when we get to the twentieth century, mass market possibilities take on a whole new dimension. Les Miserables, or the musicals of Lloyd Webber, aim at a lowest common denominator (so as to appeal to the widest mass market), and for that purpose enact a degree of simplification and ease of accessibility of music, characterisation, etc., to a much greater degree than could be said even of Meyerbeer, or Donizetti, or Offenbach or Léhar (or even G & S), though various of the latter were seen in a similar way in their own time, relative to what had come before them. This process with respect to the demands of commercialisation is not so different to that enacted by Coca-Cola or McDonalds (or Classic FM).

This should not be taken to imply any nostalgic yearning for the good old days of 'aristocratic' art, however.

I'm not really convinced that the term "bourgeousie" has any currency prior to the Industrial Revolution.  Nor can I see what your point is?   It wouldn't matter if Mozart wrote them for Martians - they were still musicals.   I also believe that for an agenda of your own external creation, you are incorrectly representing the social status of the audience for entertainments like The Magic Flute - the prices for gallery seats were within the reach of all.  The theatre itself was a panto theatre in the suburbs where working-class people lived. The problem was quite the opposite to the one you describe - the theatre had such a poor reputation that "respectable people" feared to go there.  It was a "Funambules" theatre, catering to exactly the working-class you claim to champion.

It's a great pity that you're only able to view historical events through the blinkers of Marxist analysis, resulting in anachronistic and wrong-footed conclusions - and even the falsification of evidence (viz the social status of the patrons of Mozart's Singspiels) to support those conclusions.

By the way, "Bastien & Bastienne" was not written for the bourgeousie at all, so your sweeping statement is doubly wrong.  It was commissioned from an 8-year-old Mozart privately by the pseudo-hypnotherapist (later exposed as a charlatan and forced to flee from Vienna, after causing the virtuouso pianist Mme Paradis to go blind after one of his "experiments" went wrong) "Doctor" Anton Mesmer. (His claim to a Doctorate was later also exposed as a fake). Mesmer intended the commission as a test of the young Mozart's abilities (in the light of popular rumours that Mozart's father was secretly writing the child prodigy's compositions, and the boy merely copied his father's work in a childish hand).  No public performance ever took place.  It's suggested a private performance may have happened in the gardens of Mesmer's country house, with child performers in the roles (the parts of Bastien & Bastienne are notated in french-violin clef, and the "bass" Colas in the alto-clef).  Mozart's "prize" if he completed the opera (in conditions of isolation from his father) was that Mesmer would fund the child prodigy's tour of Europe's capitals - another of Mesmer's empty promises, as it turned out.   At best you could say it was written for a "bourgeouis" patron - but certainly not for the "bourgeouis" audience you claim.  It remains a musical, despite all of the above.


Well, we'll all sleep a lot sounder knowing that, Ian. 

I don't think I did. Nor did I answer it (though I did comment) for the simple reason that I can't give any sensible answer. It's something I just sense. I suppose if I wanted to give a lot of time and thought to the question I might come up with some sort of analysis, but there are many things I would rather spend time and thought on.

girls wear posh frocks to the opera

You've deliberately misquoted me YET AGAIN in a futile attempt to win your baseless argument.

I said quite clearly THE MAGIC FLUTE.  Not "all of Mozart's Singspiels", and in fact I even went on to mention where some of his OTHER Singspiels were performed.  But detail like that is obviously wasted on you.


Crap. Mozart's MAGIC FLUTE was peformed in a working-class panto theatre, and all the gibberish you write can't alter that fact, Ian.


More crap.


If you want to sling remarks about Stalinism around, Ian, you are in no position to make moral judgments on me, and your postings have now been reported to the Moderators.  You were banned from here before for this,  and clearly your claims that you would behave better in future were a pack of lies.


That's right, buddy - I'm calling you a hypocrite.

Another discussion on this forum bites the dust - because of Ian Pace.

the drinks cost more at the opera