Operetta
Operetta is a form of light opera and musical theatre that alternates sung numbers with spoken dialogue, dance and ensemble finales, usually in the service of comic, romantic or satirical plots. Its music favours memorable melody, waltzes and marches, couplets and choruses over the continuous musical fabric of grand opera, and its tone is elegant and amorous rather than tragic. The genre took modern form in Paris with *Jacques Offenbach*, flourished in Vienna with *Johann Strauss II* and *Franz Leh谩r*, and produced a distinct English school in the Savoy operas of *Gilbert and Sullivan*, becoming a principal ancestor of the twentieth-century musical.