Carmen (1915 Cecil B. DeMille film) so DeMille instructed his screenwriter brother William to base his scenario on the public domain novella "Carmen" by Prosper Mérimée. The novella's Carmen was more wilful and manipulative than the opera version. For instance, William included a cigarette factory fight scene from the book which was not found in the opera. Composer Hugo Riesenfeld arranged the orchestral score, his first of many for film, which "was" based on that of Bizet's opera. It was performed at the premiere and other prestigious screenings. There have been two restorations of Riesenfeld's score: the first was by Gillian Anderson, recorded with the London
Opera in German In the late nineteenth century, a new, lighter form of opera, operetta, became popular in Vienna. Operettas had immediately attractive tunes, comic (and often frivolous) plots and used spoken dialogue between the musical "numbers". Viennese operetta was inspired by the fashion for the French operettas of Jacques Offenbach. "Der Pensionat" (1860) by Franz von Suppé is generally regarded as the first important operetta in the German language, but by far the most famous example of the genre is "Die Fledermaus" (1874) by Johann Strauss. Franz Lehár's "The Merry Widow" (1905) was another massive hit. Other composers who worked in this