1890s: Part II

The most popular burlesque musicals of the 1890s were created by comedians Joe Weber and Lew Fields. Weber played the short, rotund "Mike," while Fields was the tall and lean "Meyer," a bully who constantly schemed to swindle Mike out of his money. With these cartoonish personas, Weber and Fields became vaudeville's definitive "Dutch" act (a corruption of "Deutsch" - i.e. "German"). By the 1880s, they were one of the top comedy acts in vaudeville.

There was nothing subtle about Weber & Fields. They used false chin beards, pork pie hats, and outrageous German accents. Their dialogue relied on silly misunderstandings and knockabout battles. Weber once said that "all the public wanted to see was Fields knock the hell out of me." The act usually began with Fields pushing the smaller Weber onstage, Weber indignantly squealing, "Don't pooosh me, Meyer, don't pooosh me!" Both characters spoke fractured English --

WEBER: I am delightfulness to meet you!
FIELDS: Der disgust is all mine!

In the course of their banter, one would unintentionally offend the other, with insults turning into all-out battles with punches, kicks, pratfalls, etc.

Beginning in 1896, Weber and Fields used their act as the basis for more than a dozen Broadway musicals that they jointly produced and starred in. In their earliest productions, the first half of the evening was a musical burlesque of a recent Broadway hit (Cyrano de Bergerac became Cyranose de Bric-a-Brac), and the intermission was followed by a collection of individual musical comedy acts.

These Weber & Fields burlesques went so far as to spoof specific sets and costumes. These extended parodies were burlesques in the classic sense, with clean content designed to attract a family audience. The humor could aim in almost any direction. When skewering a drama set in Scotland, Weber & Fields included a song entitled "Alexander's Bagpipe Band" -- spoofing the Irving Berlin hit about a similarly named ragtime group.

Being spoofed by Weber and Fields proved to be such great publicity that producers campaigned for their shows to be targeted. The variety segments of these catch-all evenings did much to refine and define the revue as a Broadway-level entertainment.

Lillian Russell

While Weber and Fields were the main stars of their joint productions, they had the good sense to surround themselves with several of the musical theater's biggest talents -- the most stellar company Broadway has ever seen. Fay Templeton, Anna Held, DeWolf Hopper and vaudeville favorite Marie Dressler were regulars, as was Lillian Russell, a singing actress whose name lives on as the epitome of 1890s glamour.

Russell was renowned for her piping high C, a curvaceous (if increasingly ample) figure, and a winning way with comic dialogue. She debuted at Tony Pastor's in 1883 and solidified her reputation in a series of Broadway operettas. Russell's talent, beauty and infamous relationship with financier "Diamond" Jim Brady made her a national celebrity. She eventually commanded a weekly salary of $1,250, a record figure for Broadway performers of the 1890s. After adding Russell to their team, Weber and Fields dropped their existing format and switched to full-length musical comedies. With preposterous titles like Whirl-i-gig (1899 - 264) and Fiddle-dee-dee (1899 - 262), these lighthearted hits followed their New York runs with lucrative national tours.

One Russell show -- and one song -- had a back story that became the stuff of theatrical legend. Composer John Stromberg had written several hit songs for Russell. During pre-production for Twirly Whirly (1902 - 244), he delayed delivery of her new solo, insisting it was not ready. Days before the first rehearsal, Stromberg took his own life, and the folded manuscript for a sentimental ballad entitled "Come Down Ma Evenin' Star" was found in his coat pocket. Claims that Russell burst into tears while singing it on opening night were probably a press agent's fantasy, but the public was hooked. "Come Down Ma Evenin' Star" became Russell's trademark number.

Although Weber & Fields ended their Broadway partnership in 1904, they reunited eight years later for Hokey Pokey (1912 - 108) with Russell making her final Broadway appearance to reprise "Come Down Ma Evenin' Star." She continued to sing in vaudeville until failing health forced her to retire in 1919. Both Weber and Fields remained active in show business through the 1930s, reviving their old act on several occasions.

Imitators & Legacies
Weber-Fields had many imitators in vaudeville. Their Broadway burlesque-variety formula was copied by Gus and Max Rogers, who played characters painfully similar to "Mike & Meyer" in a series of eight Broadway musicals between 1899 and 1908. With pleasant but unmemorable scores, the Rogers Brothers musicals showcased such outstanding musical stage talents as Pat Rooney, Della Fox and (in her Broadway debut) vaudeville great Nora Bayes. Although audiences enjoyed the silliness, the Rogers' burlesques were no match for the best of Weber & Fields.

Lew Fields' most direct legacy was his children – librettists Herb and Joseph, and lyricist/librettist Dorothy, all of whom would contribute to some of the most important musicals of the 20th Century. But his partnership with Joe Weber left a theatrical legacy of its own. Their biographers put it this way --

How do we judge the legacy of Weber and Fields and their Music Hall? It was on the Music Hall stage that the basic forms and techniques of the revue and the musical were assembled and tried out . . .It was also on the music hall stage that Julian Mitchell defined the creative responsibilities of the stage director, becoming the progenitor of American musical directors, from Ned Wayburn to Bob Fosse. . . Socially and aesthetically, Weber & Fields Music Hall was the evolutionary link between the popular stage entertainments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
- Armond Fields and L. Marc Fields, From the Bowery to Broadway: Lew Fields and the Roots of American Popular Theater (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 203.

While homegrown musical comedies entertained New York, a British team initiated a series of shows that caught the imagination of the entire English speaking world.

Next: Gilbert & Sullivan

The Gilbert and Sullivan Story

Beginning in the 1870s, William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan revolutionized the musical theatre, creating witty, melodic operettas that set a new standard for stage professionalism. Their songs sparkled with melody and clever rhyme, and Gilbert's librettos blended silliness and satire in settings that ranged from fantasy to the realistic. Producer Richard D'Oyly Carte publicized these shows as "light operas", but by any name, they were musicals – some of the finest the world would ever see.

Early Failure
Gilbert had been an unsuccessful attorney before his illustrated comic poems appeared in several popular magazines. This opened the way to a successful career as a playwright and director. Sullivan was Britain's most promising serious composer, but he was quite willing to compose lighter pieces to cover the expenses of his high-society lifestyle. Both men had contributed to minor musical shows, but neither had any idea that musical theatre would be their key to lasting fame.

In the 1860s, the British musical theatre consisted of variety shows, French operettas, and the slapdash comic light operas presented by John Hollingshead at The Gaiety Theatre. It was Hollingshead who hired Gilbert and Sullivan to create Thespis (1871 - 63), a mythological spoof of how aging Greek gods react when a theatrical troupe stumbles onto Mount Olympus. Written and staged in five weeks, Gilbert himself later dismissed the show as "crude and ineffective." But it impressed at least one audience member – aspiring producer Richard D'Oyly Carte. Four years later, he needed a one-act "curtain raiser" to share the bill with his production of Offenbach's La Perichole at London's Opera Comique. Carte convinced G&S to adapt one of Gilbert's satirical poems.

Trial By Jury: The Curtain Raiser
The opening night of Trial By Jury as recreated for The Gilbert and Sullivan Story.

The resulting thirty five minute musical eclipsed La Perichole and became the talk of London. Trial By Jury (1875 - 131) was a delicious spoof of a breach of promise trial, a now-forgotten procedure where a man could be sued for withdrawing a proposal of marriage. In the show, the defendant is a roguish playboy, the pretty plaintiff flirts shamelessly with the all-male jury, and the amoral judge resolves things by marrying the girl himself. This piece established several themes that run through most of Gilbert and Sullivan's shows –

unqualified men who have oiled their way into high public office
the course of true love flowing in surprising directions
an appalling disdain for women over 40 years of age
For example, Trial's "Learned Judge" (originally portrayed by Sullivan's brother Frederic) sings of the questionable tactics that brought him to his exalted position --

At Westminster Hall
I danced a dance,
Like a semi-despondent fury;
For I thought I never
Should hit on a chance
Of addressing a British Jury.
But I soon got tired
Of third-class journeys,
And dinners of bread and water;
So I fell in love
With a rich attorney's
Elderly, ugly daughter.

The rich attorney,
He jumped with joy,
And replied to my fond professions:
"You shall reap the rewards
Of your pluck, my boy,
At the Bailey and
Middlesex sessions.
"You'll soon get used
To her looks," said he,
"And a very nice girl
You will find her!
She may very well pass
For forty-three
In the dusk,
With a light behind her!"

Trial By Jury premiered in the same year that the American import The Black Crook came to London. Where the American extravaganza offered mindless spectacle, the G&S piece embodied sophisticated wit. Today, The Black Crook is dated and impossible to revive, but Trial By Jury continues to delight audiences – even in amateur productions.

The Sorcerer

Both Gilbert and Sullivan looked on operettas as a sideline, but D'Oyly Carte persuaded them to attempt a full-length work. The Sorcerer (1877 - 178) involved a magician who wreaks havoc in a small English village with a love potion – a plot device Gilbert would suggest often in years to come. The Sorcerer lampooned Victorian notions of social propriety and class distinction, but it was so polished, witty and utterly respectable that no one took offense.

Gilbert and Sullivan were developing a form of British operetta that was quite unlike its continental predecessors. The overt sexual references and situations found in French operetta were altogether avoided. Where French operettas had cartoonish characters, G&S made a conscious effort to develop more familiar, believable characters. With the exception of its bizarre title character, The Sorcerer depicted people that audiences knew from everyday life.

Encouraged by The Sorcerer's profitable run, the authors wrote an operetta that had even greater fun with British social conventions. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, with a show that reshaped the popular musical theatre on both sides of the Atlantic.

Next: G&S Story II - "Pinafore-mania!"
 

"Pinafore-mania"
H.M.S. Pinafore (1878 - 571) was the story of a naval captain's daughter who spurns the attentions of the First Lord of the Admiralty (England's equivalent fir Secretary of the Navy) because she loves a common sailor. This show spoofed the Victorian system of social stratification, which limited each person's options in life based on the class they were born into. Pinafore also lampooned the British public's hypocritical tendency to condemn those marrying outside their class while applauding plays and novels that suggested "love levels all ranks." The satire was all the more effective because Gilbert's sets, costumes and staging were meticulous and realistic.

In "When I Was A Lad," The First Lord (assisted by "his sisters and his cousins and his aunts") explains how a man with no nautical experience could attain his lofty position --

Of legal knowledge
I acquired such a grip
That they took me
Into the partnership.
And that junior partnership, I ween,
Was the only ship
That I ever had seen.
But that kind of ship
So suited me,
That now I am the Ruler
Of the Queen's Navee!

I grew so rich
That I was sent
By a pocket borough
Into Parliament.
I always voted
At my party's call,
And I never
Thought of thinking
For myself at all.
I thought so little,
They rewarded me
By making me the Ruler
Of the Queen's Navee!

Now landsmen all,
Whoever you may be,
If you want to rise
To the top of the tree,
If your soul isn't fettered
To an office stool,
Be careful to be guided
By this golden rule –
Stick close to your desks
And never go to sea,
And you all may be rulers
Of the Queen's Navee!

Thanks to a freak heat wave and critical disapproval of anything making fun of Britain's sacred class system, Pinafore did sluggish business. Then Sullivan played medleys of the score at his popular summer symphonic concerts. Audiences were intrigued, and ticket sales improved, and the show became a sensation.

Pinafore was such a hit that D'Oyly Carte's investors tried to steal the production from him, sending thugs to carry off the sets and costumes in the middle of a performance!  But the cast and crew fought the blighters off, and the thieving investors only succeeded in denying themselves further participation in a theatrical gold mine. Carte formed an exclusive partnership with Gilbert and Sullivan, splitting all the production expenses and profits three ways. No interpolations by other composers were allowed, and all three men had joint say in casting and production.

The new partnership faced some daunting challenges. Since international copyright laws did not yet exist, producers had no qualms about stealing material. Both Britain and the United States were inundated with unauthorized ("pirated") Pinafore productions. When Gilbert and Sullivan brought their company of Pinafore to New York, the casts of several unauthorized Pinafore's brazenly turned out to welcome them in the harbor.

Although most Broadway critics acclaimed the authorized staging as being superior to all other versions, it had a relatively brief run. Seeing how "Pinafore-mania" had swept the US, D'Oyly Carte was determined to protect the American right to Gilbert and Sullivan's next work.

Conquering Pirates
D'Oyly Carte secured the first international copyright by premiering The Pirates of Penzance (1880) simultaneously in New York and Great Britain. Illegal productions still sprang up, but were fought in the courts – establishing legal precedents that protect composers and playwrights to this day.

Pirates is the story of Fredrick, a young man who was accidentally apprenticed to a band of pirates. He falls in love with a Major General's ward and tries to atone for his past by plotting the destruction of his former comrades. When it turns out the soft-hearted pirates are really "noblemen who have gone wrong," they and a relieved Frederick marry the multitudinous wards of the rather "modern Major General."

The success of Pirates confirmed Gilbert and Sullivan's place in popular culture. The amazing thing was that they were just getting started. They took aim at artistic snobbery in Patience (1881 - 578), the story of a pretentious poet who dazzles every woman except the dairy maid he desires. The comedy centered on the writers and artists whose obsession with beauty had come to be known as "aestheticism." To make sure Americans would understand this essentially British phenomenon, D'Oyly Carte sent famous aesthete Oscar Wilde on a lecture tour of the U.S., keeping him one city ahead of the Patience tour. The resulting public reaction made Patience a huge hit in the States.

With Patience, Gilbert and Sullivan initiated a series of works that redefined musical theatre, integrating words and music to serve plot and characterization as no one ever had before. In their earlier operettas, many of the characters were one-dimensional comic creatures that inspire little in the way of empathy. Also, there were any number of songs in those early works that could be exchanged from one character to another – even one show to another. From Patience onwards, the major characters are more complete, and the songs are almost always custom fit to each character and situation. Long before Rodgers and Hammerstein were born, Gilbert and Sullivan introduced the integrated musical. True, they called them "comic operas," but by any name they were musicals.

How They Worked
Sullivan would compose his scores after Gilbert delivered the completed librettos. Gilbert developed his story ideas in leather bound notebooks, most of which are preserved at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. These books show Gilbert working through plot twists and characterizations in pages of detailed notes. He often wrote out the plot in short story form before beginning the actual script. His dialogue and lyrics show frequent revisions.

It is no exaggeration to say Gilbert redefined the art of stage direction for the musical theatre. He was a demanding director, and sometimes relied on sarcasm rather than rage to get his points across. When a hefty actress tripped and landed on her rump, Gilbert reportedly bellowed, "I knew you'd make an impression on the stage one day!" In most cases, he was far more civil, and showed remarkable patience in training performers to achieve the effects he desired.

Gilbert would work out stage movements on a model stage using small blocks of wood to represent the actors, then teach this blocking to the cast during rehearsals. He forbade ad-libbing and the addition of any unauthorized stage business during a run. Gilbert was assisted in this by his wife Lucy, who made frequent return visits to the Savoy and provided detailed reports on the performances.

The Savoy Theatre
D'Oyly Carte built The Savoy Theatre in London as his company's headquarters. The first theatre in Great Britain to use electricity (The California Theatre in San Francisco beat it out by four years), the Savoy took its name from a famous palace that had once stood on the same location. The theatre gave its name to the G&S works ("Savoy Operas") as well as their performers ("Savoyards"). In 1889, Carte built the Savoy Hotel adjacent to the theatre, providing first-class dining for theatre goers – a new idea in the 1880s.

The long-running Patience moved to the Savoy for its final months. Iolanthe (1882 - 398) premiered there, with its tale of a fairy queen humbling a "rather susceptible" Lord Chancellor and reforming the House of Lords. This was Gilbert's "topsy-turvy" world view at its most delightful, and the chorus of fairies caused a sensation by appearing with illuminated electric wings.

With its focus on the British political system, Iolanthe was not as popular in the US as other G&S works. But Gilbert's comedy is so solid, his aim at human pretense so timeless, and Sullivan's music so rich and irresistible that many fans consider Iolanthe a personal favorite.

Princess Ida (1884 - 246) spoofed a romantic poem by Tennyson. It told of a medieval prince winning the hand of a princess who thinks women are superior to men. Based on one of Gilbert's early plays, it is the only G&S operetta where the dialogue is in blank verse. Although the plot pokes fun at feminism, it comes to the conclusion that true love makes men and women true equals. Despite a fine score, Princess Ida was not well received and closed months ahead of schedule. In accordance with the terms of their partnership agreement, D'Oyly Carte asked G&S for a new work.

Despite the success they had enjoyed, the collaborators both had reservations about their relationship. Instead of turning out a new show, all hell broke loose.

Next: G&S III - "My Object All Sublime"

The Mikado: "Object All Sublime"

Gilbert submitted yet another plot involving a love potion, and when no amount of re-writing could make Sullivan accept it, the disagreement turned ugly. Sullivan declared that it was time for him to concentrate on more serious compositions, and Gilbert resented the suggestion that their collaboration was holding Sullivan back. D'Oyly Carte staged a revival of The Sorcerer to keep the company going. The partnership was on the brink of collapse when a Japanese sword fell from the wall of Gilbert's study – inspiring the plot for the most popular show in the G&S canon.

The Mikado (1885 - 672) was influenced by an 1880s craze for “all things Japanese.” The complicated plot centers on what happens when the Emperor of Japan decrees that flirting is punishable by death. Because no one in the town of Titipu is willing to enforce this horrible law, a condemned tailor (Koko) is appointed Lord High Executioner – the reasoning being that he cannot behead anyone until he beheads himself. When it turns out he has to execute someone after all, he selects Nanki-Poo, a traveling minstrel. Nanki-Poo will only agree to the scheme if he can first marry the executioner's ward and finance, the lovely Yum-Yum. This will allow the minstrel a month of happiness, and the Executioner can then behead the man and marry his ward as planned. An aged woman (Katisha) from the royal court appears, announcing that Nanki-poo is really the crown prince who has been in hiding since he toyed with her affections! The Mikado soon arrives to proclaim that his "object all sublime" is "to let the punishment fit the crime." After a series of deceptions and misunderstandings, everything is resolved.

The Mikado's Japanese setting and costumes masked the fact that it was a send-up of British customs and pretensions. “Three Little Maids From School,” “A Wand'ring Minstrel I” and “Titwillow” were sung everywhere. In the United States, The Mikado was the only G&S operetta to repeat the impact of H.M.S. Pinafore, as "Mikado-mania" fed a nationwide American passion for all things Japanese.

Of the thirteen surviving G&S operettas, The Mikado is the only one that has been widely performed in languages other than English. It is also one of the few musicals that ever led to a diplomatic fracas. When the Crown Prince of Japan made a state visit to Britain in 1907, the work was banned - a maneuver that backfired when the prince complained that he had hoped to see The Mikado during his stay. It remains one of the most frequently produced musicals of all time, and still receives new amateur and professional stagings worldwide.

Living up to The Mikado
Few things are harder than trying to follow-up one's own smashing success. Gilbert and Sullivan's melodramatic spoof Ruddigore (1887 - 288) had its charms. Although rarely staged today, it has a fine score and a well crafted story – but many complained that it was not another Mikado. (As if anything could be?) Sullivan once again grumbled that he should be working on more serious compositions, and made it clear that he was ready to abandon operetta altogether. Gilbert enticed him with a libretto unlike any other in the series. Set in the Tower of London, The Yeomen of the Guard (1888 - 423) had political intrigue and the threat of execution overshadowing a Renaissance romance. Yeoman gave Sullivan the opportunity for his most ambitious Savoy score, and Gilbert's script had little of his "topsy-turvy" sense of humor. The most serious of Gilbert and Sullivan's works, it was Sullivan's personal favorite.

The team resumed their comic ways with The Gondoliers (1889 - 554), the story of two anti-royalist Venetian gondoliers who find themselves kings of a revolution-torn country. G&S had tremendous fun with the foibles of monarchy and democracy, and the show was a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic. The reclusive Queen Victoria invited the D'Oyly Carte company to give several private performances in her various homes – including a memorable Gondoliers at Windsor Castle. These performances confirmed the new respectability Gilbert and Sullivan had brought to the musical theatre. No doubt Her Majesty enjoyed a quartet in which the gondoliers and their fiancées sing of what a glorious thing it is "to be a regular royal queen."

When it seemed Gilbert and Sullivan's collaboration was at its peak, it fell apart over several trivial disputes – including an infamous quarrel over the price of some new carpeting in the Savoy Theatre. D'Oyly Carte and his wife Helen sided with Sullivan, and produced his long awaited grand opera Ivanhoe.

After several years, the Savoy trio effected a reconciliation, but things were never quite the same. Utopia Limited (1893 - 245) made fun of Britain's attempts to remake other nations in its own image, and The Grand Duke (1896 -123) had a theatrical troupe trying to seize power in a tottering German principality. While both works were melodic and entertaining, neither ran long enough to cover their high production costs. Gilbert and Sullivan's talents were intact, but both were losing the fresh creative edge that enlivened their most popular works.

Curtain Calls

Gilbert and Sullivan remained on cordial terms in their final years, and were both hailed by the public. When Sullivan received a knighthood in 1888, Gilbert was overlooked. The old collaborators worked on revivals and shared curtain calls at the opening nights. Sullivan continued composing classical pieces, and wrote comic operas with new librettists, including the well-received The Emerald Isle (1900). Weakened by years of kidney trouble, he succumbed to a severe case of bronchitis in 1900 at age 58 years.

Gilbert enjoyed renewed health and popularity in the new century, writing plays and musical librettos, and finally receiving his overdue knighthood in 1907. He even had the satisfaction of living long enough to be acclaimed as what he was – a British national treasure. In late May 1911, Gilbert (at age 74) suffered a fatal heart attack while saving a young woman from drowning on his country estate.

After many years of illness, Richard D'Oyly Carte died in 1901. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company continued under the management of his wife Helen, son Rupert and granddaughter Bridget, reviving the best of G&S through most of the 20th century. Financial woes forced the company to shut down in 1983, but a "new" D'Oyly Carte organization was soon formed. Although the founding family is no longer in charge, the company continues to stage popular revivals of the G&S cannon in Britain.

The G&S Legacy in Britain

The works of G&S have been popular with all levels of British society for more than a hundred years – an extraordinary achievement in one of the world's most class-conscious cultures. Richard D'Oyly Carte's descendants revived the operettas right through the 20th Century, and amateur groups performed the canon throughout the British Empire. Thanks to Gilbert and Sullivan, the British public's affection for popular music became stronger than ever. Noel Coward gives us a sense of what it was like to grow up in Britain at the turn of the 20th century –

"I was born into a generation that still took light music seriously. The lyrics and melodies of Gilbert and Sullivan were hummed and strummed into my consciousness at an early age. My father sang them, my mother played them, my nurse, Emma, breathed them through her teeth while she was washing me, dressing me and undressing me and putting me to bed. My aunts and uncles, who were legion, sang them singly and in unison at the slightest provocation."
- The introduction to The Noel Coward Song Book (London: Methuen, 1953), p. 9.

The D'Oyly Carte family retained exclusive British production rights to all the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. While this arrangement encouraged ongoing interest in the works and helped to develop a solid G&S "tradition," it also limited the ways in which these musical could be produced and performed.

What can be confidently said is that the combination of the "tradition" and D'Oyly Carte exclusivity kept several generations of performers, conductors and directors from bringing their gifts to Gilbert and Sullivan. We will never know what Noel Coward might have brought to the role of Sir Joseph Porter, for example, or how Charles Laughton might have played Wilfred Shadbolt. Julie Andrews never sang Josephine or Mabel. Sir Thomas Beecham never conducted Yeomen of the Guard . . . we can only speculate on what was lost.

It is almost impossible to estimate the influence G&S had on the development of musical theatre, both as a business and as an art form, in Britain and the United States. Thanks to them, the musical theatre was redefined forever. The changes were many . . .

Next: After Gilbert and Sullivan

The Gaiety Musicals
The Quaker Girl came to Broadway in 1911 with Ina Claire (far left) in the title role. A poor British girl wins the love of a young American diplomat, but only after she runs away to be a model in Paris.

In Britain, everything on the musical stage during the late 1800s was measured against the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Their most successful competitor was producer George Edwardes. His first hit was major was Dorothy (1886 - 931), a comic opera by B.C. Stephenson ad composer Alfred Cellier (Sullivan's former conductor). Initially a modest success at the Gaiety Theatre, the show was purchased by Edwardes accountant, who moved the show, recast it effectively, and kept it a sold-out hit for two additional years. With a sweet tale of a rake who falls in love with his disguised fiancée, and the hit ballad "Queen of My Heart," Dorothy broke all London stage records, running far longer than any G&S production. After the modestly successful follow-up Doris (1889 - 202), Cellier's promising career was cut short by his premature death.

Edwardes stumbled upon a new formula with The Gaiety Girl (1893 - 413), perhaps the only book musical named after its theatre. It was the first in a series of musicals that would pack The Gaiety for decades. Although the earliest of these shows have the same sound one expects from Gilbert & Sullivan's operettas, Edwardes called them "musical comedies" – leading some scholars to incorrectly credit him with inventing a form that Harrigan & Hart had established on Broadway a decade earlier. Although Edwardes was not the true inventor of musical comedy, he was the first to elevate these works to international popularity. When The Gaiety Girl reached Broadway in 1894, the imported British chorus of "Gaiety Girls" caused a sensation.

The Gaiety musicals had two basic plots – either a poor girl loves an aristocrat and wins him against all odds, or a girl tries to escape an unwanted marriage and leads other characters on a chase through some colorful locale. Decades later, a nostalgic Noel Coward described these shows as follows –

In most of these entertainments there was nearly always a bitter misunderstanding between the hero and the heroine at the end of the first act. (if it was in two acts) or the second act (if it was in three acts). Either he would insult her publicly on discovering that she was a princess in her own right rather than the simple commoner he had imagined her to be, or she would wrench his engagement ring from her finger, fling it at his feet and faint dead away on hearing that he was not the humble tutor she had loved for himself alone, but a multi-millionaire. The ultimate reconciliation was usually achieved a few seconds before the final curtain, after the leading comedian had sung a topical song and there was nothing left to do but forgive and forget . . . I still long to hear the leading lady cry with a breaking heart, "Play louder – play louder. I want to dance and forget!"

All the scores bore a certain resemblance, as did the titles – The Shop Girl, The Geisha, The Quaker Girl, My Girl, The Circus Girl, The Utah Girl, A Runaway Girl . . . all variations on the same basic theme. And that is exactly the way the critics and public wanted it. As late as 1920, a West End revival of The Shop Girl racked up 327 performances. 

The London hits from this period that traveled to Broadway could not equal the influence Gilbert and Sullivan had on the American theatre. Theatre historian Sheridan Morley points out that Britain's musical theatergoers "settled into a tasteful kind of calm from which they had to be regularly jolted by occasional glimpses of how these things were done on the other side of the Atlantic." (Spread a Little Happiness, Thames & Hudson, London, 1987, p. 29).

G&S in the USA
All-juvenile casts of G&S were extremely popular. Here is a program for one such company that appeared on Broadway performing Patience in the 1880s.

Appearing at about the same time as the musical farces of Harrigan and Hart, the works of Gilbert and Sullivan appealed to a much wider audience. After the first unauthorized version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore premiered in the United States in 1878, the craze known as "Pinafore-Mania" quickly swept the nation.

Pinafore's songs captivated the nation, and the line "What never? Well, hardly ever," became part of everyday conversation. When one newspaper editor angrily commanded his reporters to never use the phrase again, they responded, "What never?" Defeated, he said, "Well, hardly ever!" Unauthorized companies toured the show all over the country, with several troupes playing simultaneously in New York.

The works of G&S remained popular in America through the 20th Century, including a record setting centennial Broadway production of Pirates of Penzance (1981 - 787). The effect of W.S. Gilbert on American lyricists reaches into our own time. Johnny Mercer said, "We all come from Gilbert." Larry Hart called Gilbert "the master," Alan Jay Lerner wrote that it was Gilbert who "raised lyric writing from a serviceable craft to a legitimate popular art form," and Stephen Sondheim included an homage to Gilbert in his Pacific Overtures (1976) showstopper "Please Hello."

But that was all in the future. In the 1880s, Pinafore and the G&S hits that followed made most of America's musical stage entertainment look third rate. Thanks to the industrial revolution and the growth of American cities (the same cultural forces that brought about the growth of vaudeville) theatergoers were becoming more numerous and more sophisticated. Theatrical standards in the US began to change, and an ambitious new breed of native-born musicals quickly developed.

Several American repertory companies based on the D’Oyly Carte model thrived during the1880s. The Boston Ideal Opera Company, later known as The Bostonians, toured the country for over a quarter of a century giving top-quality professional performances. Most troupes were centered around a particular star, but The Bostonians made their mark as an ensemble. Their repertory included Gilbert & Sullivan as well as original American musicals. Some of the most memorable American "comic operas" –

Wang (1891 - 151) starred matinee idol DeWolf Hopper as the regent of Siam, who tries to end his country's bankruptcy by marrying a rich foreigner. Because popular comedienne Della Fox appeared in tights and portrayed a male character, the producers billed the show as an "operatic burletta." A modest success in its Broadway run, Wang enjoyed extended popularity on tour.
DeKoven & Smith reached their peak with Robin Hood (1891), a semi-comic opera based on the popular British legend of a nobleman who steals from the rich to give to the poor. It featured "Oh Promise Me," a sentimental ballad that became a favorite at American weddings. (Click here to see a script sample from Robin Hood.)
Although DeKoven was prolific, his melodies faded from public favor soon after he completed his longest-running hit, The Highwayman (1897 - 123).
Harry B. Smith was one of the unsung giants in the development of the American musical. In a career spanning from 1887 to 1932, he wrote the librettos for 123 Broadway musicals. (By comparison, the great Oscar Hammerstein II wrote less than 50 shows.) Smith's productions included the earliest American comic operas, 13 musicals with Victor Herbert, and material for the earliest editions of Ziegfeld's Follies. Forgotten today, Smith did much to set a professional standard in this young art form.

Now that the American musical had learned to have a good laugh and sing a catchy tune, it was ready for what the 1900s would bring. "It was the music of something beginning, an era exploding, a century spinning . . . "

Next: Broadway 1900 - 1918