Who we are

For the past fifteen years, Folks Operetta has been translating, restoring, and producing rare Viennese and German operettas. Founded in 2006 by the husband and wife team of Gerald Frantzen and Alison Kelly, Folks Operetta has reconstructed and produced over nineteen new productions of some of the rarest shows in the world. In 2018 Folks Operetta initiated the Reclaimed Voices Series to focus on the works of Jewish composers and librettists who either perished or were forced into exile during the Second World War. The series is the compass that guides our company’s work and mission. Our programming is centered on telling these composers’ stories. We have created a series of concerts to educate the public and present in-depth looks at these composers’ lives. For the past three years, we have reconstructed their works and produced fully-staged American premieres of their shows.

We have recently expanded our mission to include the world of opera. Many Jewish opera composers of the era suffered similar fates to their colleagues in operetta. Aside from the personal trauma that these artists experienced during the war, they suffered the further indignity of having their work ignored for decades. A once-thriving artistic community became a footnote. Our intention is to bring these composers and librettists out of the shadows.  With this in mind, in late 2018, we created The Korngold Initiative, a fundraising campaign to bring Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s last opera, Die Kathrin (Kathrin), to Chicago for its American premiere.

Why we matter

Over the past fifteen years we have worked tirelessly to reconstruct these forgotten and neglected works  and introduce them to new audiences, in an effort to preserve these works for generations to come. Our work has inspired companies around the world to take a new look at these works. We have helped to reclaim the voices of many composers and librettists whose work might have never been heard again.

Our Mission

We believe that the arts serve to illuminate the human condition. Folks Operetta is dedicated to the revival and development of operetta, a popular and accessible form of musical theater for general audiences. In particular, we concentrate on producing Viennese, German, and American operettas from the early 20th Century, many of which have never been performed in the United States. In doing this work, we discovered that many of the genre’s composers and librettists were Jewish, and were exiled, perished or persecuted during the Second World War. As a result, we have made it our mission to focus on the operettas and the operas of these composers and librettists.