But "Operetta" is difficult to read for still another reason. I have always been captivated by the form of the operetta which, in my opinion, is one of the most felicitous forms ever produced by the theatre. While opera remains something awkward, something hopelessly doomed to pretentiousness, operetta, in its divine idiocy, in its heavenly sclerosis, in its glorious etherealness thanks to song, dance, gesture and mask, seems to me the perfect theatre, perfectly theatrical. No wonder then that I finally yielded to temptation...

But... how to fill the puppet-show void of that operetta with real drama? For, as we know, the task of the artist lies in the eternal reconciliation of contradictions, and if I have applied myself to so frivolous a form it was to furnish and replenish it with gravity and suffering. On the one hand, therefore, this operetta should, from beginning to end, be nothing but an operetta, sovereign and inviolable in its operetta-like elements; on the other hand, it should be a solemn drama of humanity. No one can imagine how much effort the dramatic organization of this nonsense cost me. To infuse an operetta with a certain passion, a certain drama, a certain pathos, without infringing upon its sacred folly - that is no small problem.

The monumental idiocy of the operetta going hand in hand with the monumental pathos of history - an operetta mask concealing bloody visage of mankind, contorted by a ridiculous pain - would doubtless be the best way of staging "Operetta" in the theatre. And in the reader's imagination as well.

- Witold Gombrowicz