Max Kalbeck was a close friend and partisan of Johannes Brahms. Kalbeck's principal achievement was his eight-volume biography of that composer, published from 1904 to 1914, which has never been translated into English. Kalbeck also edited several volumes of Brahms's correspondence and in 1918, the letters of the poets Gottfried Keller and Paul Heyse, as well as publishing two collections of his own music reviews. Kalbeck wrote new libretti for Mozart's "Bastien und Bastienne" and "La finta giardiniera"; and he revised those of "Don Giovanni" and "The Marriage of Figaro" for Gustav Mahler's productions at the Vienna Hofoper. In addition, he supplied
Comic opera was commissioned by the Bolshoi theatre and premiered on March 23, 2005. The staging of the opera was accompanied by juicy scandal; however it was an enormous success. In the United States, Victor Herbert (1859–1924) was one of the first to pick up the family-friendly style of light opera that Gilbert and Sullivan had made popular, although his music was also influenced by the European operetta composers. His earliest pieces, starting with "Prince Ananias" in 1894, were styled "comic operas," but his later works were described as "musical extravaganza", "musical comedy", "musical play", "musical farce", and even "opera comique." His