Traces the history of the European cabaret, discusses the types of entertainment that developed in cabarets, and explains their connection with avant-garde movements.

Three idiosyncratically macabre cabaret-restaurants in Monmartre, each with its own grotesque portrayal of the afterworlds of Hell, Heaven, and Nothingness. From 1892 until 1954, three cabaret-restaurants in the Montmartre district of Paris captivated tourists with their grotesque portrayals of death in the afterworlds of Hell, Heaven, and Nothingness. Each had specialized cuisines and morbid visual displays with flashes of nudity and shocking optical illusions. These cabarets were considered the most curious and widely featured amusements in the city. Entrepreneurs even hawked graphic postcards of their ironic spectacles and otherworldly interiors. Cabarets of Death documents the dinner shows, the character interactions with guests, and the theatrical goings-on in these unique establishments. Presenting original images and drawings from contemporary journals, postcards, tourist brochures, and menus, Mel Gordon leads a tour of these idiosyncratically macabre institutions, and grants us unique access to a form of popular spectacle now gone.

Step into Ernst Wolzogen's Motley Theater, Max Reinhardt's Sound and Smoke, Rudolf Nelson's Chat noir, and Friedrich Hollaender's Tingel-Tangel. Enjoy Claire Waldoff's rendering of a lower-class Berliner, Kurt Tucholsky's satirical songs, and Walter Mehring's Dadaist experiments, as Peter Jelavich spotlights Berlin's cabarets from the day the curtain first went up, in 1901, until the Nazi regime brought it down. Fads and fashions, sexual mores and political ideologies--all were subject to satire and parody on the cabaret stage. This book follows the changing treatment of these themes, and the fate of cabaret itself, through the most turbulent decades of modern German history: the prosperous and optimistic Imperial age, the unstable yet culturally inventive Weimar era, and the repressive years of National Socialism. By situating cabaret within Berlin's rich landscape of popular culture and distinguishing it from vaudeville and variety theaters, spectacular revues, prurient nude dancing, and Communist agitprop, Jelavich revises the prevailing image of this form of entertainment. Neither highly politicized, like postwar German Kabarett, nor sleazy in the way that some American and European films suggest, Berlin cabaret occupied a middle ground that let it cast an ironic eye on the goings-on of Berliners and other Germans. However, it was just this satirical attitude toward serious themes, such as politics and racism, that blinded cabaret to the strength of the radical right-wing forces that ultimately destroyed it. Jelavich concludes with the Berlin cabaret artists' final performances--as prisoners in the concentration camps at Westerbork and Theresienstadt. This book gives us a sense of what the world looked like within the cabarets of Berlin and at the same time lets us see, from a historical distance, these lost performers enacting the political, sexual, and artistic issues that made their city one of the most dynamic in Europe.

"A splendid introduction to the world of the European cabaret in the first period of its meteoric rise as a form of artistic creativity."--Harold Segel

Harlem's nightclubs in the 1920s and '30s were a crucible for testing society's racial and sexual limits. Combining performance theory, historical research, and biographical study, this title explores the role of nightlife performance as a definitive touchstone for understanding the racial and sexual politics of the early 20th century.

Traces the history of the European cabaret, discusses the types of entertainment that developed in cabarets, and explains their connection with avant-garde movements

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2022 "When the world comes to an end," Viennese writer Karl Kraus lamented in 1908, "all the big city orchestras will still be playing The Merry Widow." Viennese operettas like Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow were preeminent cultural texts during the Austro-Hungarian Empire's final years. Alternately hopeful and nihilistic, operetta staged contemporary debates about gender, nationality, and labor. The Operetta Empire delves into this vibrant theatrical culture, whose creators simultaneously sought the respectability of high art and the popularity of low entertainment. Case studies examine works by Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, and Leo Fall in light of current musicological conversations about hybridity and middlebrow culture. Demonstrating a thorough mastery of the complex early twentieth-century Viennese cultural scene, and a sympathetic and redemptive critique of a neglected popular genre, Micaela Baranello establishes operetta as an important element of Viennese cultural life—one whose transgressions helped define the musical hierarchies of its day.

The phrase "popular music revolution" may instantly bring to mind such twentieth-century musical movements as jazz and rock 'n' roll. In Sounds of the Metropolis, however, Derek Scott argues that the first popular music revolution actually occurred in the nineteenth century, illustrating how a distinct group of popular styles first began to assert their independence and values. He explains the popular music revolution as driven by social changes and the incorporation of music into a system of capitalist enterprise, which ultimately resulted in a polarization between musical entertainment (or "commercial" music) and "serious" art. He focuses on the key genres and styles that precipitated musical change at that time, and that continued to have an impact upon popular music in the next century. By the end of the nineteenth century, popular music could no longer be viewed as watered down or more easily assimilated art music; it had its own characteristic techniques, forms, and devices. As Scott shows, "popular" refers here, for the first time, not only to the music's reception, but also to the presence of these specific features of style. The shift in meaning of "popular" provided critics with tools to condemn music that bore the signs of the popular-which they regarded as fashionable and facile, rather than progressive and serious. A fresh and persuasive consideration of the genesis of popular music on its own terms, Sounds of the Metropolis breaks new ground in the study of music, cultural sociology, and history.

Fashion is synonymous with change yet the iconic showgirl costume--feathers, sparkle and revealing clothes--has remained largely unchanged since the early 20th century. Beginning in the 1800s, a couture of the risque evolved from Paris nightclubs to Las Vegas casinos. The concept of glamour itself was based on what Parisian courtesans and burlesque performers wore. A tall pretty girl with headdress, nude core with spangles, high heels and dramatic makeup became a Gallic symbol and later the trademark of Hollywood musicals. France exported costumes and millinery--as well as whole productions from the Moulin Rouge, the Lido and Folies Bergere --to the U.S. and the world. More recently, cabaret styling has translated into today's day, sport and evening clothes.

The Encyclopedia of Music in the 20th Century is an alphabetically arranged encyclopedia of all aspects of music in various parts of the world during the 20th century. It covers the major musical styles--concert music, jazz, pop, rock, etc., and such key genres as opera, orchestral music, be-bop, blues, country, etc. Articles on individuals provide biographical information on their life and works, and explore the contribution each has made in the field. Illustrated and fully cross-referenced, the Encyclopedia of Music in the 20th Century also provides Suggested Listening and Further Reading information. A good first point of reference for students, librarians, and music scholars--as well as for the general reader.