Tin Pan Opera: Operatic Novelty Songs in the Ragtime Era by Larry Hamberlin (review)

Larry Hamberlin explores an area of early twentieth-century music that has never before been highlighted: popular songs that rely upon audience familiarity with the arias, characters, and celebrated performers of famous operas. This subgenre of popular song emerged from the special circumstances of that time; as those conditions are unlikely to reoccur, we are unlikely to see its reappearance. There would be no point to it; understanding the operatic references is a key to enjoying much of what the songs have to say. Many of the songs are humorous, but for the uninformed audience the jokes would fall flat. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, however, the original ragtime years, many dozens of such songs were produced, and a good part of the audience could make the connection and, when appropriate, appreciate the humor.

That a mass, popular audience could recognize operatic themes does not mean that this audience frequented opera performances. Like today, the real opera houses (unlike theaters that were pretentiously called "opera houses") were attended by relatively few. But the melodic themes from operas were widely known, being available on cylinder and disc records and performed in park and street band concerts and in vaudeville, minstrel, and silent movie theaters.

Hamberlin uses the social circumstances reflected in these songs as his springboard. In the first of three parts, "Caruso and His Cousins," he treats songs about the working-class Italian immigrant, a group easily depicted and parodied with stereotyped dialect. But though this group was scorned by the elite audience that was opera's main support, it had an undeniable and authentic cultural connection to opera and to many of opera's most celebrated performers. The songwriters' solution, as Hamberlin shows, was to belittle the cultural connection and make the immigrant Italian persona look ridiculous through exaggeration. The characters depicted in the songs would claim absurd relationships to such stars as Caruso and Tetrazzini, or would claim that they, or some close acquaintance, could easily outperform the celebrated vocalists. Adding to the flavor of the songs, the songwriters would incorporate well-known operatic melodies that create a setting for the parodies.

In the first two chapters of part 2, "Salome and Her Sisters," Hamberlin focuses upon songs that describe women who either aspire to operatic greatness or who are pale reflections of operatic models. The first chapter in part 2, "Scheming Young Ladies," is populated by songs describing amateur and student singers whose efforts with operatic vehicles bring dismay to male listeners. As Hamberlin points out, part of the impulse for the mockery inherent in these songs is a reaction against the strident feminism then gaining attention. The next chapter in part 2 presents songs that portray women who, inspired by the example of Salome's "Dance of the Seven Veils" in Richard Strauss's opera, use unseemly bodily display to forward their aims and achieve fame. Hamberlin retells the events of the New York premiere of Salome, its abrupt removal from the Metropolitan Opera Company's repertory, the ensuing scandal that inspired burlesque-house managements to stage striptease versions and gave songwriters a rich theme for musical humor. Many of these songs invoke the "hootchy-kootchy," or bellydance, that had become prominent in the preceding decade, and, like most of the other novelty songs described, are in a humorous vein, as men either show their appreciation of the feminine display or express shocked disapproval. While these songs do not use excerpts from Strauss's opera, Hamberlin's analysis reveals a common "Salome" melodic pattern that emerged and became associated with many of the Salome songs.

The third chapter in this part concerns songs that respond to America's relations with Japan, and particularly the amorous affairs between American sailors and Japanese women, most prominently and tragically portrayed in Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Unlike the Salome songs, which erupted upon the public after a...