In the 19th century, Spieloper ('opera play') was understood to mean a light opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 genre, developed from Singspiel

Singspiel

A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...

. Works typical of the genre include those by Albert Lortzing

Albert Lortzing

Gustav Albert Lortzing was a German composer, actor and singer. He is considered to be the main representative of the German Spieloper, a form similar to the French opéra comique, which grew out of the Singspiel.-Biography:Lortzing was born in Berlin to Johann Gottlieb Lortzing and Charlotte Sophie...

, such as Zar und Zimmermann

Zar und Zimmermann

Zar und Zimmermann is an opera in three acts, music by Albert Lortzing, libretto by the composer after Georg Christian Römer's Der Bürgermeister on Saarlem, oder Die zwei Peter, itself based on a French work entitled Le Bourgesmestre de Sardam, ou Les deux Pierres by Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier...

, and Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merry Wives of Windsor (opera)

The Merry Wives of Windsor is an opera in three acts by Otto Nicolai to a German libretto by Hermann Salomon Mosenthal, based on the play The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare....

. A key difference between Spieloper and Singspiel on the one hand, and opera buffa

Opera buffa

Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 on the other, is that the two former genres contain spoken dialogue

Dialogue

Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....

s instead of recitative

Recitative

Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...

s, which is why Conradin Kreutzer

Conradin Kreutzer

Conradin Kreutzer or Kreuzer was a German composer and conductor. His works include the opera for which he is remembered, Das Nachtlager in Granada, and Der Verschwender, both produced in 1834.Kreutzer owes his fame almost exclusively to Das Nachtlager in Granada , which kept the stage for...

's Das Nachtlager in Granada

Das Nachtlager in Granada

Das Nachtlager in Granada is a romantic opera in two acts by Conradin Kreutzer. The libretto is written by Karl Johann Braun von Braunthal based on Johann Friedrich Kind’s drama Das Nachtlager von Granada....

and Friedrich von Flotow

Friedrich von Flotow

Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand, Freiherr von Flotow was a German composer. He is chiefly remembered for his opera Martha, which was popular in the 19th century....

's Martha

Martha (opera)

Martha, oder Der Markt zu Richmond is a 'romantic comic' opera in four acts by Friedrich von Flotow, set to a German libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese and based on a story by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges....

do not belong to this genre.

Technically, a Spieloper is an opera with a comic plot and light, pleasant music, differentiating it from more serious opera. Similarly, there are special role types such as Spieltenor or Spielbass for singers with lighter voices and the ability to act in comedies.

The Spieloper was also inspired by the French opéra comique

Opéra comique

Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 of the late 18th century, a narrowly defined form of opera. The boundaries between Spieloper and a form of German drama "Posse mit Gesang

Posse mit Gesang

Posse mit Gesang is a form of popular German-language music drama, that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early examples are sometimes called 'Possenspil' or 'Possenspiel'...

" (melodramatic comedy with musical interludes) and operetta are not well distinguished.

Sources

• Warrack, John and West, Ewan (1992), The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 782 pages, ISBN 0-19-869164-5
• Some of the material in this article is from the German Wikipedia article