Frederick George Hobson, known as Fred Leslie, was an English actor, singer, comedian and dramatist.
Henri Meilhac was a French dramatist and opera librettist, best known for his collaborations with Ludovic Halévy on Georges Bizet's Carmen and on the works of Jacques Offenbach, as well as Jules Massenet's Manon.
La mascotte is a three-act opéra comique with music by Edmond Audran and words by Alfred Duru and Henri Chivot. The story concerns a farm girl who is a "mascotte": someone with the mystic power to bring good luck to all around her, so long as she remains a virgin.
Les cloches de Corneville is an opéra-comique in three acts, composed by Robert Planquette to a libretto by Louis Clairville and Charles Gabet.
To-Night's the Night is a musical comedy composed by Paul Rubens, with lyrics by Percy Greenbank and Rubens, and a book adapted by Fred Thompson. Two songs were composed by Jerome Kern. The story is based on the farce Les Dominos roses by Alfred Hennequin and Alfred Delacour.
Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué is a burlesque written by A. C. Torr and Herbert F. Clark with music by Meyer Lutz. It is based on the Victor Hugo drama Ruy Blas. The piece was produced by George Edwardes. As with many of the Gaiety burlesques, the title is a pun.
Henry Brougham Farnie, often called H. B. Farnie, was a British librettist and adapter of French operettas and an author. Some of his English-language versions of operettas became record-setting hits on the London stage of the 1870s and 1880s, strongly competing with the Gilbert and Sullivan operas being played at the same time.
Geneviève de Brabant is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, by Jacques Offenbach, first performed in Paris in 1859. The plot is based on the medieval legend of Genevieve of Brabant.
La fille du tambour-major is an opéra comique in three acts, with music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Alfred Duru and Henri Chivot. It was one of the composer's last works, premiered less than a year before his death. It opened at the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques, Paris, on 13 December 1879, and, after a successful initial run, was frequently revived in Paris and internationally, but in recent times has not been among the Offenbach operas most frequently staged.
Les brigands is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, by Jacques Offenbach to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Meilhac and Halévy's libretto lampoons both serious drama and opéra comique. The plot is cheerfully amoral in its presentation of theft as a basic principle of society rather than as an aberration. As Falsacappa, the brigand chieftain, notes: "Everybody steals according to their position in society." The piece premiered in Paris in 1869 and has received periodic revivals in France and elsewhere, both in French and in translation.
Nell Gwynne is a three-act comic opera composed by Robert Planquette, with a libretto by H. B. Farnie. The libretto is based on the play Rochester by William Thomas Moncrieff. The piece was a rare instance of an opera by a French composer being produced first in London. Farnie had written an earlier libretto on the same subject, with the same name, for composer Alfred Cellier, which was produced at the Prince's Theatre in Manchester in 1876.
La fille de Madame Angot is an opéra comique in three acts by Charles Lecocq with words by Clairville, Paul Siraudin and Victor Koning. It was premiered in Brussels in December 1872 and soon became a success in Paris, London, New York and across continental Europe. Along with Robert Planquette's Les cloches de Corneville, La fille de Madame Angot was the most successful work of the French-language musical theatre in the last three decades of the 19th century, and outperformed other noted international hits such as H.M.S. Pinafore and Die Fledermaus.
Alice May was an English singer and actress best remembered as the creator of the soprano role of Aline in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer (1877).
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its popular companion piece, Jacques Offenbach's La Périchole. The story concerns a "breach of promise of marriage" lawsuit in which the judge and legal system are the objects of lighthearted satire. Gilbert based the libretto of Trial by Jury on an operetta parody that he had written in 1868.
Frederick John D'Auban was an English dancer, choreographer and actor of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Famous during his lifetime as the ballet-master at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, he is best remembered as the choreographer of many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
Sarah Frances Marie Martinot was an American actress and soprano singer who performed on stage in dramas, musical comedy and comic opera. Her career began at the age fifteen as Cupid in Ixion; or, the Man at the Wheel and, but for a few years absence, she remained active on stage in America and abroad until 1908. She was the first to play Hebe in an American production of H.M.S. Pinafore, the first Katrina in the comic opera Rip Van Winkle and the first to play the title role in an English adaptation of the operetta Nanon. Late in her life Martinot would fall victim to mental illness and spend her last few years confined to psychiatric institutions.
Rip's Dream is a 1905 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès.
La cigale et la fourmi is a three-act opéra comique, with music by Edmond Audran and words by Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru. Loosely based on Jean de La Fontaine's version of Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, the opera shows the lives of two young women, one prudent, like the ant, the other improvident and reckless, like the grasshopper. Unlike the Aesop fable this version has a happy ending, with the "ant" looking after the destitute "grasshopper".
Le grand mogol is an opéra bouffe with music by Edmond Audran. The opera depicts the love between an Indian prince and a young Parisienne, and the unsuccessful attempts of conspirators to thwart their romance.
The Sultan of Mocha is a three act comic opera of 1874 with a libretto by Albert Jarrett and a score by Alfred Cellier. It was first produced at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester in 1874 and revived in London in 1876 and 1887 and in New York in 1880, among others.
