Related Research Articles
Sweethearts is an operetta or musical play in two acts with music by Victor Herbert, lyrics by Robert B. Smith and book by Harry B. Smith and Fred de Gresac.
Emmerich Kálmán was a Hungarian composer of operettas and a prominent figure in the development of Viennese operetta in the 20th century. Among his most popular works are Die Csárdásfürstin (1915) and Gräfin Mariza (1924). Influences on his compositional style include Hungarian folk music, the Viennese style of precursors such as Johann Strauss II and Franz Lehár, and, in his later works, American jazz. As a result of the Anschluss, Kálmán and his family fled to Paris and then to the United States. He eventually returned to Europe in 1949 and died in Paris in 1953.
Guy Reginald Bolton was an Anglo-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the US, he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G. Wodehouse and Fred Thompson, with whom he wrote 21 and 14 shows respectively, and the American playwright George Middleton, with whom he wrote ten shows. Among his other collaborators in Britain were George Grossmith Jr., Ian Hay and Weston and Lee. In the US, he worked with George and Ira Gershwin, Kalmar and Ruby and Oscar Hammerstein II.
The New Moon is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Frank Mandel, and Laurence Schwab. The show was the third in a string of Broadway hits for Romberg written in the style of Viennese operetta. Set in 1792, shortly before the French Revolution, the story centers on a young French aristocrat in disguise, who has fled his country and falls in love with the daughter of a prominent New Orleans planter.
Alfred Grünwald (1884–1951) was an Austrian author, librettist, and lyricist. Some of his better-known works were written in conjunction with the composers Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, Paul Abraham, and Robert Stolz.
Evelyn Laye was an English actress and singer.
Jeanne Aubert was a French singer and actress.
Harry Bache Smith was a writer, lyricist and composer. The most prolific of all American stage writers, he is said to have written over 300 librettos and more than 6000 lyrics. Some of his best-known works were librettos for the composers Victor Herbert and Reginald De Koven. He also wrote the book or lyrics for several versions of the Ziegfeld Follies.
Albert Szirmai was a Hungarian operetta composer and music editor. Szirmai was a graduate of the Budapest Academy of Music, studying piano and composition. Szirmai received a doctorate in music from the University of Budapest, and was devoted to creating works for the stage. He wrote music for 12 one-act plays and over 300 songs for the Budapest theater Népszínház-Vígopera, at which he was musical director. When his first operetta, The Yellow Domino, met with success, he decided to continue in the genre; it is due to the works of Szirmai, Emmerich Kálmán, and Victor Jacobi, among others, that the Hungarian operetta gained recognition internationally at the beginning of the 20th century.
Germaine Yvonne Arnaud was a French-born pianist, singer and actress, who was well known for her career in Britain, as well as her native land. After beginning a career as a concert pianist as a child, Arnaud acted in musical comedies. She switched to non-musical comedy and drama around 1920 and was one of the players in the second of the Aldwych farces, A Cuckoo in the Nest, a hit in 1925. She also had dramatic roles and made films in the 1930s and 1940s, and continued to act into the 1950s. She occasionally performed as a pianist later in her career. The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre was named in her memory in Guildford, Surrey.
Barbe-bleue is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, in three acts by Jacques Offenbach to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy based on Charles Perrault's 1697 story.
Sir Henry Lytton was an English actor and singer who was the leading exponent of the starring comic patter-baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1909 to 1934. He also starred in musical comedies. His career with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company spanned 50 years, and he is the only performer ever knighted for achievements in Gilbert and Sullivan roles.
George Grossmith Jr. was an English actor, theatre producer and manager, director, playwright and songwriter, best remembered for his work in and with Edwardian musical comedies. Grossmith was also an important innovator in bringing "cabaret" and "revues" to the London stage. Born in London, he took his first role on the musical stage at the age of 18 in Haste to the Wedding (1892), a West End collaboration between his famous songwriter and actor father and W. S. Gilbert.
Madame Pompadour is an operetta in three acts, composed by Leo Fall with a libretto by Rudolph Schanzer and Ernst Welisch. Conducted by the composer, it opened at the Berliner Theater in Berlin on 9 September 1922 and then at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 2 March 1923.
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.
Paganini is an operetta in three acts by Franz Lehár. The German libretto was by Paul Knepler and Bela Jenbach.
Alice Henriette Lapize, better known by her stage name, Alice Delysia and sometimes Elise Delisia, was a French actress and singer who made her career in English musical theatre. After performing in the chorus at the Moulin Rouge and other theatres in Paris from the age of 14, she became a chorus girl in Edwardian musical comedies, briefly on Broadway in 1905, then in London for several years and back in Paris in 1912.
Princess Charming, also known as Alexandra, is a 1934 British musical comedy film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Evelyn Laye, Henry Wilcoxon, and Yvonne Arnaud. It was made at Islington Studios by Gainsborough Pictures. The film's sets were designed by Ernő Metzner. It is part of the operetta film genre that was popular during the era.
Frederick Strafford Moss was a British tenor and actor. He appeared in the Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan from 1897 to 1913, mainly in touring companies of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, following which he had a career in musical theatre on the West End stage until 1931.
Blue Eyes is a musical composed by Jerome Kern, with a book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and Graham John. Orchestrations were by Robert Russell Bennett, and the original producer was Lee Ephraim. The musical was a historical comedy and romance set against the backdrop of Jacobite Charles Edward Stuart's attempts to restore the House of Stuart to the British throne. In the plot of Blue Eyes a London actress disguises herself as a soldier to help her brother who has been imprisoned by the Duke of Cumberland in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden. It starred Evelyn Laye, and comic relief was provided by W. H. Berry, who "disguised himself as a silly Scotsman, a flea circus owner [and a] French dancing teacher".
References
- ↑ 1926 London theatre chronology, Guide to Musical Theatre
- ↑ "Princess Charming" in The Play Pictorial
- ↑ "Princess Charming" [ permanent dead link ] at the Modern Theatre site
- ↑ "The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Oct. 27, 1930", Time Magazine, October 27, 1930
- ↑ Suskin, Steven. Show tunes (2000), Oxford University Press US, ISBN 0-19-512599-1, p. 39