Candide and the tradition of American operetta

Leonard Bernstein's Candide, billed as a comic operetta, includes many allusions to the American operetta style of the 1920s as exemplified in the work of Sigmund Romberg and Rudolf Friml. The genre was experiencing renewed popularity in the 1950s through studio recordings, films, radio and television broadcasts and live performances. Audiences would have recognized many features in Candide as operetta tropes, both musical and textual: musical in terms of vocal types and styles, and the textual in terms of socio-political references.