Would you consider Les Miserables (the musical) to be an opera?

It occurs to me that unlike most stage musicals, Les Miserables is almost entirely sung with hardly any spoken dialog. So it seems more like an opera than a musical – or perhaps an operetta.

But the voicing, arrangements and singing style certainly do not resemble opera – at least not the few that I’ve listened to.

I generally roll my eyes at arguments over genre classifications because I just listen to whatever the hell I want, and classify it in my three-category system:

  1. I like it.
  2. I don’t like it.
  3. Eh.

But I know so little about this area that I thought I might learn something interesting from the discussion.

Operetta? Huh. I thought operettas were supposed to be funny.

My greatuncle the music historian (specialist in Baroque music yet Verdi’s biggest fan ever) usually refers to Les Miserables as an opera but the few times I’ve been there where he discussed it I was part of another conversation. I know he said that being an opera is not about whether your soprano can hit the real high notes or not, or even about having a soprano, but I don’t remember what exactly did he list that made Les Miserables and opera.

There was a lively discussion in, I think, the NY Times letter columns several years ago about whether or not Broadway musicals could qualify as operas or operettas. It was quickly decided that many of the criteria people used to omit B’way works from the world of Opera/Operetta – couldn’t be collaborations between several people, couldn’t have spoken interludes, couldn’t deal with comedy/tragedy/contemporary subjects – wouldn’t serve to distinguish between the two groups – you could find operas that fit the same criteria. Ultimately, the division seems to rest solely upon the origins and venues, and otherwise pretty artificial.

Are you implying that everything in an opera/operetta is sung? Just off the top of my head, there’s quite a bit of talking in *Carmen, *for example. And for the record: what we think of as “musical theater” has its origins more in operetta than opera; the turning point was probably the works of Sigmund Romberg. Yet, as far as *Le Miserables *is concerned, I put it in the same category as *Porgy and Bess *and much of Sondheim’s work. Although most opera companies have performed them, they are primarily performed in theaters rather than opera houses. They, along with the composers’ other works, exist in the context of musical theater, not opera. And definitely not operetta.

In short, we don’t think of them as operas because of their context, therefore they’re not.

It’s a opera, since I’m pointing to it and saying, “That’s an opera.”

No, wait. It’s a musical, since I’m pointing to it and saying, “That’s a musical.”

There’s absolutely no way to come up with a definition that differentiates what you consider “Opera” from what you consider “musical,” other than listing operas vs. musicals. So ultimately, it comes down to nitpicking.

And Certs is a breath mint.

In Spain there is only one “Opera Theater” in the whole country, most theaters are multipurpose. Most opera representations outside El Liceo take place during summer festivals, often open-air. How many “opera only” theaters are in the whole world? Even allowing for “opera and recitals”.

Well, then, what’s the difference between a theater and an opera house?

Practically speaking, none. The Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado would be called a theater anywhere else, and most of its offerings were theatrical performances rather than technical operas. On top of which “opera” is just the plural of opus, meaning “work”. So you could argue that any work of art constituted “opera”.
Again, the distinction is the historical lineage and the way it’s perceived. I think if you try to make some degfinition to distinguish the two, you’ll end up with sometyhing that a sufficiently clever arguer could wriggle out of.

Candy mint, dammit.

There’s no fat lady in Les Miserables, so it can’t be an opera, right? I saw it in London in the fall of '85 and was just bowled over. It’s the only performance of anything I’ve ever seen where I spontaneously leapt to my feet to give it a standing ovation. You might say I liked it a lot.

Doesn’t an opera depend on the style of singing?