This entertaining and thorough examination of operetta remains the only complete, richly-illustrated history available of a delightful form of musical theater which has enraptured audiences around the world for over a century. Coming at a time of renewed enthusiasm for operetta, Richard Traubner"s timely volume shakes the dust off many exciting pieces, while documenting the creation of the masterworks of the form, including Orphée aux Enfers, Die Fledermaus, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Merry Widow, The Desert Song, and White Horse Inn. It covers the careers of the major operetta composers and librettists--including Offenbach, Hervé, Strauss, Gilbert and Sullivan, Lehár, Coward, and Lerner and Loewe--the original productions of their works, the principal foreign versions, the famous revivals, and related aspects of public and critical reaction, as well as providing a chronicle of operetta"s greatest theaters and most popular stars.