The (Non-)seriousness of culture: the case of the Lithuanian operetta
ENHistory tells us that the first composer to use the word "operetta", to make fun of the ‘minor works’ of his time, was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Although the operetta has since become a genre in itself, in Lithuania, which was in full construction of its cultural identity at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was perceived as quite problematic. Whereas the importance of the opera had been unquestionable since the creation of the first Lithuanian opera in 1906, and the majority of cultural State funding had been devoted to it, the operetta on the contrary was considered as a genre inevitably pulling down the professional level. Such a contradiction between the desire to raise the level of opera singers and musicians, and an inevitable belittling of musical level through the operetta, spans the entire interwar period. The paradigm of a necessarily "serious" national culture, coupled with the mocking speech of musical critics, has marginalized the "non-serious" genres such as the operetta. Instead of disappearing, it has however found another way out: high-level variety music. The eternal questioning about higher art and lower art not only influences national cultural prejudices, but also forms the basis of a global vision of cultures, as Th. Adorno (in “Paralipomena”) has shown when comparing French "entertainment" to "serious" German art. [Publisher annotation]
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