It is clear that the productions in the West End and on Broadway of The Merry Widow marked a distinctive new phase in operetta reception. The massive success of The Merry Widow opened up a flourishing market for operettas from Vienna and Berlin. This was confirmed by the huge success of Straus’s The Chocolate Soldier in New York (1909) and London (1910). The Berlin operettas of Jean Gilbert were soon in demand in the West End and on Broadway. Continental European operetta entered a marketplace dominated by musical comedy. The first major blow to the operetta market, especially in the UK, was the outbreak of the First World War. After the war, many creators of operetta were eager to escape to the comfort of historical romances. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, many people were prepared to pay for operetta, and an assortment of theatres and ticket prices enabled a broad social mixture to do so. In addition to critical-aesthetic reception, theatrical productions were open to moral concerns. The chapter ends with reflections on the reasons for the decline in productions on Broadway and in the West End post-1933.

Accounts of how modernity affected the arts frequently draw connections with the aesthetics of modernism. The concept of the modern was broader than this, however, and included all new developments that had produced marked effects on social and cultural life. In the early twentieth century, operetta frequently engaged with everyday life, and related to features of modernity such as trains, cars, planes, factories, cinemas and hotels. Familiar objects of the modern age that members of the audience might either possess or desire feature often on stage. Women’s issues surface in operetta, whether they involve marriage, voting rights, treatment at work, careers, or questions of sexuality. The chapter also includes an account of developments in stage technology and modern mobilities.