Please go on Cambridge Scholars Publishing and google my name…..Dario Salvi -

Also have a look on here at Die Afrikareise – and Rumshinsky – Genee – and more – and if you are worried by the existence of Imperial Vienna Orchestra, sorry for you! Feel free to send us financial contribution so that we can start doing a more professional job.

Imperial – cause the main music played by the orchestra is from a time when Austria had its empire – Imperial refers to that time.

I know who you are – maybe you have no clue who I/we are and what we are trying to do in an hostile country (to this type of music) …

Anyway, thanks for the contribution. It is nice to have someone spending time reading our little articles.

Dario

Of course, 19th century ‘translations’ and ‘adaptations’ of foreign-laguage works into English were often hamfisted and hurried. It was how things were done in those days. Look at the mutilations of everything foreign that were made for the American stage (English pieces included) in the C19th. Look at the mutilations of the dazzling French comedies that were ‘re-made’ for German, Hungarian, English etc stages … Look at the mutilation of French plays remade as Austrian musicals … (a soubrette, for heaven’s sake, tacked into LE REVELLION) … British musicals … American musicals …
Has anyone (apart from me) actually READ and compared those plays with their foreign language equivalents or distortions or derivatives?

If you want to do a 1884 text – and by the way the piece in question was effectively translated into English 12 years earlier and played at no less than the Gaiety Theatre – don’t whinge about its humour being old-fashioned. Stick some good old “Carry On” or “Are You Being Served” comedy lines into it and you’ll have 21st century Norwich in fits.

So, why didn’t this person do a new translation if she/he didn’t like the old one? Maybe she/he didn’t speak German? Maybe she/he hasn’t read the original? Maybe she/he shouldn’t have taken the job?

I saw the piece in Vienna 20 years ago. It was delightful …

But what is worrying me most is this Imperial orchestra … Bah!