THE STUDENT PRINCE Musical play in 2 acts
The Student Prince was not the first musical to be based on Meyer-Förster’s 1901 Studentenstück Alt Heidelberg (Berliner Theater 22
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HERVÉ: Florimond Ronger (b Houdain, 30 June 1825; d Paris, 3 November 1892)
Florimond Ronger, known to the musical and theatrical world simply as Hervé, was one of the great characters in,
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The 19th century’s most popular musical-theatre composer: Jacques Offenbach
The son of a German bookbinder, music-teacher and cantor called Eberst, but known as Offenbach, the young Jacob was given
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Altenburg bei Paris? Or: “Toi c’est moi”
Yesterday I went to Altenburg. I know, even my German friends say ‘where?’. Well, it’s a lovely town in Thüringen,
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“Welt der Operette: Glamour, Stars und Showbusiness”
This big and lavishly illustrated coffee table book appears as a companion to an exhibition at the Österreichischer Theatermuseum in
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ORPHÉE AUX ENFERS Opéra-bouffon in 2 acts
Orphée aux enfers was Offenbach’s first venture into mounting a full-scale opéra-bouffe at his blossoming little Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, where
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Rudolf Friml (b Prague, 8 December 1879; d Hollywood, Calif, 12 November 1972)
The Prague-born Friml studied music in his native city from a young age, and made his early career principally as
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DER BETTELSTUDENT Komische Operette in 4 acts
Millöcker’s most successful Operette and, indeed, one of the very few 19th-century Viennese pieces which do not have the fashionable
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BOCCACCIO Operette in 3 acts
Franz von Suppé followed up his first great success with a full-length Operette, Fatinitza, with a second, three years later.
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GOING UP Musical comedy in 3 acts
James Montgomery’s 1910 play The Aviator was put to musical use seven years on by its author and the now
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THE DESERT SONG Musical play in 3 acts
The most internationally successful and the most enduring of Sigmund Romberg’s long line of romantic musical plays, The Desert Song
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DAS DREIMÄDERLHAUS Singspiel in 3 acts
The most widely successful, and also one of the most enduring, of all pasticcio musical plays, from The Beggar’s Opera
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LA BELLE HÉLÈNE Opéra-bouffe in 3 acts
The fourth of Offenbach’s great opéras-bouffes burlesqueing ancient historical legend or mythology (after Orphée aux enfers, Geneviève de Brabant and
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DIE FLEDERMAUS Comic Operetta in 3 acts
The greatest theatrical success of composer Johann Strauss, and the most internationally enduring of all 19th-century Viennese Operetten — the
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FATINITZA Operette in 3 acts
Suppé had been writing theatre music ranging from songs for Singspiele, burlesque, farce and spectaculars to short and medium-sized Operetten
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DER LUSTIGE KRIEG Operette in 3 acts
The eighth in Strauss’s list of Operetten, Der lustige Krieg followed behind the disastrous Blindekuh and the rather more successful
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DIE LUSTIGE WITWE Operette in 3 acts
Henri Meilhac’s play L’Attaché d’ambassade, produced at Paris’s Théâtre du Vaudeville in 1861, was not a success. It was played
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A Life on the Ocean Wave: The Story of Henry Russell
One of the great popular musical performers of the nineteenth century’ is Andrew Lamb’s description of the subject of this
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Virgilio RANZATO (b Venice, 7 May 1883; d Como, 20 April 1937)
One of the handful of Italian composers who made a significant contribution to a brief flowering of musical plays in
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L’ACQUA CHETA Operetta in 3 acts
One of the most successful Italian operettas of its period, L’acqua cheta was adapted by Novelli from his successful 1908
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THE RED WIDOW Musical play in 3 acts
Colonel Savage’s enormously successful novel His Official Wife was leaped upon by a horde of theatrical adapters, filmed by Hollywood
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LA FILLE DE MADAME ANGOT Opéra-comique in 3 acts
Along with Planquette’s Les Cloches de Corneville, La Fille de Madame Angot (Théâtre des Fantaisies-Parisiennes, Brussels, 4 December 1872) was
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Charles Lecoq (b Paris, 3 June 1832; d Paris, 24 October 1918)
The most potent musician in the development of the French opérette tradition in the 1870s, and for a decade the
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ROSE MARIE Musical play in 2 acts
Although the Broadway musical theatre had established itself worldwide with its light-handed song-and-dance shows – Going Up, Irene, Mercenary Mary,
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LE PETIT FAUST Opéra-bouffe in 3 acts
Of Hervé’s three most successful full-scale opéras-bouffes, it was Le Petit Faust, the only one of the three to parody
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Sigmund Romberg (b Nagykanizsa, Hungary, 29 July 1887; d New York, 9 November 1951)
Romberg studied the violin in his youthful years in Hungary, but he was set at first towards an adult career
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The most successful composer of the English opéra-bouffe and -comique stage: Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Seymour Sullivan (b London, 13 May 1842; d London, 22 November 1900). Educated at the Chapel Royal, the Royal
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The most talented librettist and lyricist for the 19th-century English-language theatre: W. S. Gilbert
William Schwenk Gilbert (b London, 18 November 1836; d Harrow Weald, 29 May 1911). The most talented librettist and lyricist
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THE VAGABOND KING Musical play in 4 acts
One of the many variants on the Abu Hasan ‘king for a day’ tale, Justin McCarthy’s play If I Were
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THE GEISHA, a story of a tea house Japanese musical play in 2 acts
The most successful of the series of important musical plays produced by George Edwardes at Daly’s Theatre around the turn
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BARBE-BLEUE Opéra-bouffe in 3 acts
After their enormous success with La Belle Hélène at the Théâtre des Variétés, the Meilhac-Halévy-Offenbach team followed up with a
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CHILPÉRIC: Opéra-bouffe in 3 acts and 4 tableaux
One of the most successful of extravagantly humorous full-length opéras-bouffes written and composed by the playwright/composer Hervé, Chilpéric went even
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THE ARCADIANS Fantastic musical play in 3 acts
Perhaps the most complete of all the British Edwardian musical comedies, The Arcadians mixed the light romantic and the broadly
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