Musical of the Month

A guest post by Brian D. Valencia

Evangeline, or The Belle of Acadia rounds out the Musical of the Month blog's consideration of the four most popular American-devised musicals of the late 19th century. Only The Black Crook  (1866) surpassed Evangeline in frequency, longevity, and popularity—and Humpty Dumpty (1868) and A Trip to Chinatown (1890/1) trailed not far behind. It premiered in New York in 1874, and remained a fixture of the American musical repertory for the next three decades, reportedly amassing more than 3,000 total performances and appearing as late as 1901 throughout 

A guest post by Tracy C. Davis, Barber Professor of Performing Arts — Northwestern University.

Extracted from the preface to Dorothy in Tracy C. Davis, ed., The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Performance (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2012). The full text of the book and lyrics (based on the British Library's manuscript) appears for the first time in this volume.

A guest post by Professor William Everett

Part of the innate appeal of the Princess Theatre musicals comes from the songs, which famously emerge out of the plots. Musical numbers in these shows illuminate some dimension of the story; characters often reflect on what is happening at the time or offer insights into their personalities and desires. As Stephen Banfield asserts in his extraordinary study of Kern and his music, songs in the Princess Theatre musicals constitute the middle parts of sequences that generally move from dialogue to song to dance. (Banfield, Jerome Kern, 86-88). In a musical, musical style can accentuate or reveal details in ways that 

A guest post and edition by Andrew Lamb.

The works of Gilbert and Sullivan dominated nineteenth-century British comic opera from the start. Yet in neither London nor New York was a work of theirs the longest-running British comic opera of its time. Indeed, in New York The Mikado wasn't even the most successful British comic opera of its year.

A guest post By Laura Frankos
Oh, Boy!: Kern, Bolton, Wodehouse and the Princess Theatre Musicals
The Genesis of the Series

In 1913, the Shuberts added another theatre to their empire at 104 West 39th Street, on the edge of the theatre district. Architect William Albert Swaney, who had built the Winter Garden for the brothers, designed an intimate 299-seat house, with an understated Georgian exterior of red brick and limestone and five stories of office space for rental income. The theatre, dubbed the Princess, spent its first seasons as "the Theatre of Thrills," as manager Ray Comstock mounted a series of unsuccessful Grand Guignol one-acts. Its 

A guest post by Professor William Everett.

His statue stands in Times Square, the only one located at the "Crossroads of the World." This legendary showman did it all—actor, writer, composer, producer, manager, sheet music publisher. If one individual had to be chosen as an embodiment of the breadth of the stage entertainment industry at the turn of the twentieth century, an ideal choice would be George M. Cohan (1878-1942).

A guest post by Elizabeth Titrington Craft.

"I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy / A Yankee Doodle do or die / A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam / Born on the Fourth of July." If these lines conjure up a familiar patriotic ditty, perhaps learned in school or heard at Independence Day celebrations, then you already know one of the hit songs from George M. Cohan's 1904 musical Little Johnny Jones. This landmark show tapped into the nationalism of the day and fashioned Cohan's public persona, earning him his reputation as the "Yankee Doodle Dandy" himself. Cohan's theatrical "flag-waving" and his vision of nationhood both delighted 

A quiz for musical theater fans: Name a musical, set at the close of the 19th century, in which two young men deceive a crotchety old man in order to escape his oversight and seek love and adventure in the big city. The young men, together with their female romantic partners and a romantically available widow, go to a fancy restaurant where, through a somewhat improbable chain of events, the old man is also present and expecting to meet a potential romantic partner himself. A scuffle breaks out at the restaurant, and at the conclusion of the scene the old man is left with a bill for the whole party — which he cannot pay because he has lost his wallet. The musical was extremely 

A Guest Blog By Project Co-Director, Professor William Everett

In 1910 impresario Oscar Hammerstein sold his interests in his Manhattan Opera Company to his chief rival, the Metropolitan Opera, and agreed not to produce any opera in New York City for a decade. Instead, he turned his attention toward the related genre of operetta and commissioned the noted composer-conductor Victor Herbert to write a new work that would feature two of his Manhattan Opera Company stars, Emma Trentini and Orville Harrold. Hammerstein wanted a highly operatic operetta, and Herbert more than accommodated his producer's wishes.

A Guest Blog By Ellen Peck

To music historian Richard Traubner, operetta evokes “gaiety and lightheartedness, sentiment and Schmalz” (Traubner, Operetta: A Theatrical History, revised edition, 2003). If any song in the history of American musical theatre has earned a reputation for schmaltz, it would have to be “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life” from the 1910 Victor Herbert and Rida Johnson Young operetta Naughty Marietta.

A guest blog by project co-director, Professor William Everett

The Pink Lady (1911) is one of those delightful gems from a century ago with a title that suggests something eminently enjoyable. This is indeed the case for the English-language musical version of the French farce Le Satyre by Georges Berr and Marcel Guillemaud. The Pink Lady's creative team included several significant names of the era, as did the original cast. The music and plot were closely intertwined, with musical numbers advancing the storyline and dramaturgical aspects being emphasized through musical style.

When I asked Miles Kreuger, founder of the Institute of the American Musical in Hollywood, if there were any pre-1923 (out-of-copyright) titles he would especially like to see online, he replied, "Ohhh, the Pink Lady" with the sort of fond recollection usually reserved for a dear, departed loved one. I was embarrassed that I had never heard of it. Asking around amongst my friends and fellow musical theater scholars, I found, somewhat salving my pride, that I was not alone. No one had read the script or knew much of the score.

A Guest Post By Brad Rosenstein

Bitter Sweet, an operetta that features wall-to-wall music, ironically began its life as a silent film scenario. Noël Coward’s tremendous theatrical successes of the 1920s were a lure to movie producers, and no fewer than three of his plays were translated into films in 1927 alone. But given that it was still the era of silent movies, all three adaptations unsurprisingly flopped, bereft of Coward’s scintillating comic dialogue.

A Guest Post by Project Co-Director Professor William Everett

Nöel Coward's Bitter Sweet is in many ways an ode to the world of romantic operetta. In 1929, when the show first appeared, operetta was all too often thought of as embodying some sort of sentimental nostalgia for a time entrenched in the pathos of nevermore. Ivor Novello (1893-1951), who, like Coward, was an actor, composer, and singer, wrote to the show's creator: "The whole thing is so full of regret — not only for that darling lover who died but for a vanished kindly silly darling age" (Barry Day, ed., The Letters of 

A guest post & edition by Brian D. Valencia

When Shuffle Along opened at the 63rd Street Music Hall on May 23, 1921, it marked the return of all-black musical shows to Broadway after nearly a decade-long silence. The last successful musical wholly written and performed by African Americans to be performed south of Harlem had been the George Walker–Bert Williams vehicle Bandanna Land in 1908. When Walker fell ill on its tour, Williams was left to star alone in the following year’s Mr. Lode of Koal, which ran only half as long as its predecessor with half of its top billing missing. The only other original 

A Guest Blog on Victor Herbert's Birthday by Professor William Everett

Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland is typical of turn-of-the-century musical theater in that it encompasses various musical styles and tropes drawn from multiple genres. Musical comedy, as Babes in Toyland is described in the libretto, is evident in the comedic dialogue and contemporary references. Extravaganza, the designator it shares with The Wizard of Oz, comes through dazzling spectacle. But it is operetta, the quintessential Continental European style, that concerns us here.

A Guest Blog by Adam Roberts, Music Director

Greetings! My name is Adam Roberts, and I serve as Music Director of the Music Theatre Online archive. If you're a theater professional, you're probably already aware of the responsibilities traditionally assumed by a music director (MD). But perhaps you're new to the musical theater world and are unfamiliar with the term. This entry will focus on my general approach to the musical direction of this specific initiative, both for readers who already have a solid handle on what we musical directors do as well as those who may be exploring the topic from an "outsider's" perspective.

A Guest Blog by Larry Moore

In the NYPL Rare Books Division, among the Townsend Walsh correspondence, there is an undated 1902 letter from director Julian Mitchell to his publicist/business manager, Townsend Walsh, informing Walsh in confidence that he had asked Glen MacDonough to rewrite the libretto for The Wizard of Oz before it opened at New York's Majestic Theatre at Columbus Circle in January 1903. Since MacDonough's copyright libretto for Babes in Toyland was registered with the Library of Congress in January 1903, it's difficult to know which libretto was actually borrowing elements from the other. It's most likely that Mitchell 

A Guest Post By Professor William Everett

The Wizard of Oz, this month’s Musical of the Month, has ties to one of the most important musical theater composers of its day, Victor Herbert (1859-1924). The Irish-born and German-trained cellist, conductor, and composer had written several significant works for the musical theater in the years leading up to the appearance of The Wizard of Oz, most notably The Fortune Teller (1898).