Naughty Marietta (operetta)

Naughty Marietta
Sheet music cover
Music	Victor Herbert
Lyrics	Rida Johnson Young
Book	Rida Johnson Young
Productions	1910 Broadway 1935 Film 1955 Television

Naughty Marietta is an operetta in two acts, with libretto by Rida Johnson Young and music by Victor Herbert. Set in New Orleans in 1780, it tells how Captain Richard Warrington is commissioned to unmask and capture a notorious French pirate calling himself "Bras Piqué" – and how he is helped and hindered by a high-spirited runaway, Contessa Marietta. The score includes many well-known songs, including "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life".

Naughty Marietta had its first performance on October 24, 1910, in Syracuse, New York, and opened on Broadway on November 7, 1910, playing for 136 performances at the New York Theatre. It enjoyed revivals in 1929 at Jolson's 59th Street Theatre and in 1931 at Erlanger's Theatre. The operetta became Victor Herbert's greatest success.

A film version of Naughty Marietta was released by MGM in 1935 starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. A television version of the operetta was broadcast live in the United States on January 15, 1955, starring Patrice Munsel and Alfred Drake.

In eighteenth century New Orleans, the townspeople go about their daily business in the Place d'Armes ("Clear Away!"). Étienne Grandet, the son of the colony's acting governor, has just returned from a trip to France, and the young ladies warn him that the pirate Bras Piqué has been attacking ships bound for New Orleans; the town fountain is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a woman he killed. Étienne, unknown to all but his father and his quadroon slave mistress Adah, is really Bras Piqué. He gives his father a share of the profits from his crimes, and his father keeps his identity secret.