A hybrid word, derived from the English ‘extravagance’ but taking its ending from the Italian stravaganza, applied to works that depend for their interest on extravagant fancy of one kind or another.
It has been used for instrumental works that either deliberately violate the conventions of contemporary style or are designed in the spirit of burlesque or caricature (see Stravanganza). Mozart’s Ein musikalischer Spass k522 has been quoted as the classic instance of instrumental extravaganza. Stanford’s Ode to Discord (1908) was an attempt to caricature the apparent liberties taken by composers of his day.
The term is also applied to a genre of light theatrical entertainment with music, a form of Burlesque, popular in England during the 19th century. The term and the genre may be said to have been invented by James Robinson Planché, who described it as ‘the whimsical treatment of a poetical subject’ as distinct from ‘the broad caricature of a tragedy or serious opera, which was correctly termed a “Burlesque”’. Planché’s most characteristic and significant extravaganzas were his fairy plays, beginning with Riquet with the Tuft (1836).
Extravaganzas tend to be less strongly bound to a model than burlesques and were often based on classical stories. Distinctions between the two genres were often subtle, if not arbitrary; but the best extravaganzas were characterized by more consistent stories rendered more delicately than in burlesque, and in some instances the music tended to be more highly developed. A ‘Chinese Extravaganza’ by Hale and Talfourd called The Mandarin’s Daughter (1851) was one of many exotic extravaganzas and may well have influenced Gilbert and Sullivan in works like The Mikado. Gilbert used the term more than once as a subtitle, e.g. Trial by Jury: an Extravaganza.
For bibliography see Burlesque.
MICHAEL TILMOUTH/FREDRIC WOODBRIDGE WILSON