Prince Ananias
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Prince Ananias
''Prince Ananias'' was the first operetta composed by Victor Herbert. The libretto is by Francis Neilson. It was first produced by a troupe called "The Bostonians" at The Broadway Theatre on November 20, 1894, directed by Jerome Sykes. It remained in their repertoire for three seasons and was given more than 300 performances in all. A modest success at first, it did well on tour.Gould, pp. 266 and 269 Synopsis Arriving at the court of King Boniface, a touring troupe of players finds that the king has lost his ability to laugh. They are tasked with finding his sense of humor; the penalty for failure is death. They produce a work, ''Prince Ananias'', that is not well-received, except that the title character is so inept that the king bursts out laughing. Thus, the players have a happy ending, as do the several pairs of lovers who overcome various romantic and backstage complications. Roles and original cast *Boniface, King of Navarre – George Frothingham *Cerdic, Duc d'An ...
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Prince Ananias
''Prince Ananias'' was the first operetta composed by Victor Herbert. The libretto is by Francis Neilson. It was first produced by a troupe called "The Bostonians" at The Broadway Theatre on November 20, 1894, directed by Jerome Sykes. It remained in their repertoire for three seasons and was given more than 300 performances in all. A modest success at first, it did well on tour.Gould, pp. 266 and 269 Synopsis Arriving at the court of King Boniface, a touring troupe of players finds that the king has lost his ability to laugh. They are tasked with finding his sense of humor; the penalty for failure is death. They produce a work, ''Prince Ananias'', that is not well-received, except that the title character is so inept that the king bursts out laughing. Thus, the players have a happy ending, as do the several pairs of lovers who overcome various romantic and backstage complications. Roles and original cast *Boniface, King of Navarre – George Frothingham *Cerdic, Duc d'An ...
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Operetta
Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its shorter length, the operetta is usually of a light and amusing character. It sometimes also includes satirical commentaries. "Operetta" is the Italian diminutive of "opera" and was used originally to describe a shorter, perhaps less ambitious work than an opera. Operetta provides an alternative to operatic performances in an accessible form targeting a different audience. Operetta became a recognizable form in the mid-19th century in France, and its popularity led to the development of many national styles of operetta. Distinctive styles emerged across countries including Austria-Hungary, Germany, England, Spain, the Philippines, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. Through the transfer of operetta among different countries, cultural cosmop ...
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Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert (February 1, 1859 – May 26, 1924) was an American composer, cellist and conductor of English and Irish ancestry and German training. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I. He was also prominent among the Tin Pan Alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). A prolific composer, Herbert produced two operas, a cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 plays, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions and numerous songs, choral compositions and orchestrations of works by other composers, among other music. In the early 1880s, Herbert began a career as a cellist in Vienna and Stuttgart, during which he began to compose orchestral ...
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Francis Neilson
Francis Neilson (26 January 1867 – 13 April 1961) was an accomplished actor; playwright, stage director; political figure; member of the British House of Commons; avid lecturer; author of more than 60 books, plays and opera librettos and the most active leader in the Georgist movement. Early life Born Francis Butters, the eldest of nine siblings, in Claughton Road, Birkenhead, England, he was the son of a Shropshire father, Francis Turley Butters and a Scottish mother from Dundee, Isabella Neilson Hume. He attended the Liverpool Institute for Boys. Several accounts explain that because of his large family, Neilson left school at the age of fourteen and moved to the United States at the age of eighteen. Nevertheless, the British Census of 1881 records the Butters' household as having 12 people, including 8 children and two maids. The census also records Francis Butters (Neilson's father) as a restaurant keeper. Move to US In the United States, after arriving in New York City, ...
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Boston Ideal Opera Company
The Boston Ideal Opera Company, later The Bostonians, was a comic opera acting company based in Boston from 1878 through 1905.Bordman, Gerald & Thomas S. HischakThe Oxford Companion to American Theatre p. 87 (3d ed 2004) History Effie Hinckley Ober (1843–1927) started the group to perform an "ideal" production of ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' in Boston. The company first performed ''Pinafore'' in November 1878 on a boat in a lake in Boston's Oakland Park. It was a success, and the company continued.Emerson, Brad"The Pinafore Sails Down East" ''New York Social Diary'', January 25, 2011 It engaged well-regarded concert singers and opened on 14 April 1879 at the 3,000-seat Boston Theatre. The critics agreed that the company fulfilled its goal of presenting an "ideal" production. The ''Boston Journal'' reported that the audience was "wrought up by the entertainment to a point of absolute approval".Kanthor, Harold. "H.M.S. Pinafore and the Theater Season in Boston 1878–1879", ''Journal of Po ...
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Broadway Theatre (41st Street)
The Broadway Theatre near 41st Street was a Manhattan theatre in operation from 1888 to 1929.(6 January 1929)The Broadway Theatre Passes; Playhouse Built by James Bailey, Partner of P.T. Barnum, Over Forty Years Ago Witnessed the Last Engagements of Booth and Irving and the Premiere of Ben Hur ''The New York Times'' It was located at 1445 Broadway. History James Anthony Bailey, a circus manager and owner (the "Bailey" in Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus) started building the theatre in 1887 on the site of what had been the "Metropolitan Concert Hall" built in 1880. Bailey pulled out, and the project was completed by Frank Sanger, T.H. French, and E. Zborowski, with seating for about 1,800 and standing room for 500 more. The American premiere of ''La Tosca'' was performed on the theatre's opening night, March 3, 1888, featuring Fanny Davenport. It was not a great success, due in part to the Great Blizzard of 1888 hitting New York ten days later, and it closed on April ...
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Mena Cleary
Wilhelmina Cleary Masury (1867 — June 27, 1929), known professionally as Mena Cleary, was a Canadian-born American actress and singer, a member of the original cast of Victor Herbert's ''Prince Ananias'' in 1894. Early life Mena Cleary was the daughter of Martin Cleary and Maria Coghlan Cleary. She attended a convent school in Ottawa, Canada, then moved to Boston, where she studied music. She also studied voice in Paris with Giovanni Sbriglia."Mena Cleary"
''Gallery of Players'' 2(1894): 36.


Career

Mena Cleary was a soprano, her voice "by no means powerful but...very sweet," and "managed with rare skill". Cleary was a member of

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Jessie Bartlett Davis
Jessie Bartlett Davis (1860 – May 14, 1905) was an American operatic singer and actress from Morris, Illinois, who was billed as "America's Representative Contralto". Opera and acting She was born Jessie Fremont Bartlett, one of ten children of farmer and country schoolmaster Elias Lyman Bartlett (b. 1821) and his wife Rachael Ann (née Conklin) Bartlett (b. 1826). After Jessie and her older sister Arabelle "Belle" (1855–74) had become known locally as singers, they were approached by traveling managers and began touring along the West Coast of the United States. Belle died shortly after a tour was arranged. Another sister, Josephine Bartlett Perry (1859–1910) also performed in theater, in the Chicago Ideal Opera Company. Jessie Bartlett moved to Chicago, where she went on a one-season tour with Caroline Richings. She studied voice in Chicago with Sarah Robinson-Duff, sang in the choir of the Church of the Messiah, and her manager convinced her to join the Chicago Chur ...
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English-language Operettas
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ...
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Broadway Musicals
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End theatre, West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (nam ...
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1894 Musicals
Events January–March * January 4 – A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire. * January 7 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United States. * January 9 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard, in Lexington, Massachusetts. * February 12 ** French anarchist Émile Henry sets off a bomb in a Paris café, killing one person and wounding twenty. ** The barque ''Elisabeth Rickmers'' of Bremerhaven is wrecked at Haurvig, Denmark, but all crew and passengers are saved. * February 15 ** In Korea, peasant unrest erupts in the Donghak Peasant Revolution, a massive revolt of followers of the Donghak movement. Both China and Japan send military forces, claiming to come to the ruling Joseon dynasty government's aid. ** At 04:51 GMT, French anarchist Martial Bourdin dies of an accidental detonation of his own bom ...
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Operas By Victor Herbert
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as ''Singspiel'' and ''Opéra comique''. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of singing: ...
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