The Prix de Rome or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them to stay in Rome for three to five years at the expense of the state. The prize was extended to architecture in 1720, music in 1803 and engraving in 1804. The prestigious award was abolished in 1968 by André Malraux, then Minister of Culture, following the May 68 riots that called for cultural change.
Joseph Schildkraut was an Austrian-American actor. He won an Oscar for his performance as Captain Alfred Dreyfus in the film The Life of Emile Zola (1937); later, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance as Otto Frank in the film The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and a Primetime Emmy for his performance as Rabbi Gottlieb in a 1962 episode of the television series Sam Benedict.
The Société Mathématique de France (SMF) is the main professional society of French mathematicians.
William DeWolf Hopper was an American actor, singer, comedian, and theatrical producer. A star of vaudeville and musical theater, he became best known for performing the popular baseball poem "Casey at the Bat".
Sydney Grundy was an English dramatist. Most of his works were adaptations of European plays, and many became successful enough to tour throughout the English-speaking world. He is, however, perhaps best remembered today as the librettist of several comic operas, notably Haddon Hall.
Cinder Ellen up too Late is a musical burlesque written by Frederick Hobson Leslie and W. T. Vincent, with music arranged by Meyer Lutz from compositions by Lionel Monckton, Sidney Jones, Walter Slaughter, Osmond Carr, Scott Gatti, Jacobi, Robertson, and Leopold Wenzel. Additional lyrics were written by Basil Hood. The show was a burlesque of the well-known pantomime and fairy tale, Cinderella.
François Périer, was a French actor renowned for his expressiveness and diversity of roles.
Le droit d'aînesse is an opéra bouffe, a form of operetta, in three acts by Francis Chassaigne with a French libretto by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo. It premiered in Paris in 1883. An English-language version titled Falka, with a libretto translated and adapted by Henry Brougham Farnie, was successfully premiered in London later that year followed by productions throughout the English-speaking world.
The Casino Theatre was a Broadway theatre located at 1404 Broadway and West 39th Street in New York City. Built in 1882, it was a leading presenter of mostly musicals and operettas until it closed in 1930.
Les mousquetaires au couvent is an opérette in three acts by Louis Varney, with a libretto by Jules Prével and Paul Ferrier, after the 1835 vaudeville L'habit ne fait pas le moine by Amable de Saint-Hilaire and Paul Dupont. It was Varney's most successful work, and the only one to have maintained a place in the French repertoire.
Frank Wyatt was an English actor, singer, theatre manager and playwright.
Isabelle Urquhart, also known as Belle Urquhart was an American contralto and actress, noted for her performances in comic opera and musical comedy.
The Harold Pinter Theatre, known as the Comedy Theatre until 2011, is a West End theatre, and opened on Panton Street in the City of Westminster, on 15 October 1881, as the Royal Comedy Theatre. It was designed by Thomas Verity and built in just six months in painted (stucco) stone and brick. By 1884 it was known as simply the Comedy Theatre. In the mid-1950s the theatre underwent major reconstruction and re-opened in December 1955; the auditorium remains essentially that of 1881, with three tiers of horseshoe-shaped balconies.
Sylvia Gerrish was an American musical theatre performer who found success in New York and London in the 1880s and early 1890s. She was known as "The Girl with the Poetical Legs".
Marie Jansen was an American musical theatre actress best known for her roles at the end of the 19th century. She starred in a number of successful comic operas, Edwardian musical comedies, and comic plays in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and London during the 1880s and 1890s.
Violet Melnotte, was a British stage performer, actress-manager and theatre owner of the late 19th century and early 20th century. She was the wife of Gilbert and Sullivan performer Frank Wyatt, whom she met when they both appeared in the hit operetta Erminie.
Maurice Ordonneau was a French dramatist and composer. The son of a merchant of eau de vie, Ordonneau was a prolific author in creating theatrical works. He composed, often with the collaboration of other playwrights, composers and musicians, a great number of operettas, opéra-bouffes, comedies and vaudevilles.
Max Freeman was a German actor, theater director, theater manager, playwright, and producer who was primarily active in the United States. After beginning his career in his native city of Berlin in 1868, Freeman eventually moved to the United States in 1871 where he began his career in America as the theatre manager for the Germania Theatre in New York City. He had a lengthy stage career as an actor in America from 1873 until his death in 1912. Known as the "godfather of comic opera", he particularly excelled in performances in roles from light operas and musical comedies, and was also responsible for directing and producing works from this genre on Broadway. He also directed and played parts in straight plays as well. His adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's Orfée aux enfers was performed for the grand opening of Broadway's Bijou Theatre in 1883, and his original musical play Claudius Nero, based on Ernest Erkstein's novel Nero, premiered at Niblo's Garden in 1890.
Marie-Jules-Émile Moreau, better known as Émile Moreau, was a 19th-century French playwright and librettist.
