The Forty Thieves (1869 Play)
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The Forty Thieves (1869 Play)
''The Forty Thieves'', subtitled ''Striking Oil in Family Jars'', is an 1869 Victorian burlesque that Lydia Thompson's company debuted at Niblo's Garden in New York City on February 1, 1869. It ran for 136 performances. Brown, T. Allston''A History of the New York Stage'', Vol. 1 p. 205 (1902) The work was written by Henry Brougham Farnie though it was primarily a "reconstructed" version of ''Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, or Harlequin and the Genii of the Arabian Nights'', which played at Covent Garden in 1866, with jokes and other new material added for an 1868 Liverpool production. It was produced by Henry C. Jarrett and Harry Palmer. The primary gimmick of the show was that women played all the main male roles, just as Thompson had done with ''Ixion'' with great success when her troupe first came over from Britain in 1868. ''Ixion'' had played at the smaller Wood's Museum, so Thompson's move to Niblo's (which seated 3,200) for ''Forty Thieves'' demonstrated her troupe's g ...
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Lydia Thompson
Lydia Thompson (born Eliza Thompson; 19 February 1838 – 17 November 1908), was an English dancer, comedian, actor and theatrical producer. From 1852, as a teenager, she danced and performed in pantomimes, in the UK and then in Europe and soon became a leading dancer and actor in burlesques on the London stage. In 1868, she introduced Victorian burlesque to America with her troupe, the "British Blondes", to great acclaim and notoriety. Her career began to decline in the 1890s, but she continued to perform into the early years of the 20th century. Early years Thompson was born in Brydges Street, Covent Garden, London to Eliza (''née'' Cooper) and Philip Thompson (c. 1801–1842), owner of the Sheridan Knowles, a public house. Thompson was the second of three surviving children, including actress Clara Bracy. Gänzl, Kurt. "Lydia Thompson", ''Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre'', Blackwell/Schirmer (1994) Her father died in 1842, and her mother remarried Edward Hodges. By th ...
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Victorian Burlesque
Victorian burlesque, sometimes known as travesty or extravaganza, is a genre of theatrical entertainment that was popular in Victorian era, Victorian England and in the New York theatre of the mid-19th century. It is a form of parody music, parody in which a well-known opera or piece of classical theatre or ballet is adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, usually risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and often quoting or pastiche, pastiching text or music from the original work. Victorian burlesque is one of several forms of burlesque. Like ballad opera, burlesques featured musical scores drawing on a wide range of music, from popular contemporary songs to operatic arias, although later burlesques, from the 1880s, sometimes featured original scores. Dance played an important part, and great attention was paid to the staging, costumes and other spectacular elements of stagecraft, as many of the pieces we ...
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Niblo's Garden
Niblo's Garden was a theater on Broadway and Crosby Street, near Prince Street, in SoHo, Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1823 as "Columbia Garden" which in 1828 gained the name of the ''Sans Souci'' and was later the property of the coffeehouse proprietor and caterer William Niblo. The large theater that evolved in several stages, occupying more and more of the pleasure ground, was twice burned and rebuilt. On September 12, 1866, Niblo's saw the premiere of ''The Black Crook'', considered to be the first piece of musical theater that conforms to the modern notion of a "book musical". Evolution of the building site William Niblo built Niblo's Theater in 1834 after having opened a "resort" which at first only served coffee, ice cream, lemonade and other refreshments. At the time New York was undergoing a construction boom that was extending clusters of buildings much past the locale of City Hall. The garden, surrounded by a plain board fence, covered the block bou ...
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Victorian Burlesque
Victorian burlesque, sometimes known as travesty or extravaganza, is a genre of theatrical entertainment that was popular in Victorian era, Victorian England and in the New York theatre of the mid-19th century. It is a form of parody music, parody in which a well-known opera or piece of classical theatre or ballet is adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, usually risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and often quoting or pastiche, pastiching text or music from the original work. Victorian burlesque is one of several forms of burlesque. Like ballad opera, burlesques featured musical scores drawing on a wide range of music, from popular contemporary songs to operatic arias, although later burlesques, from the 1880s, sometimes featured original scores. Dance played an important part, and great attention was paid to the staging, costumes and other spectacular elements of stagecraft, as many of the pieces we ...
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New York Herald
The ''New York Herald'' was a large-distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between 1835 and 1924. At that point it was acquired by its smaller rival the ''New-York Tribune'' to form the '' New York Herald Tribune''. History The first issue of the paper was published by James Gordon Bennett Sr., on May 6, 1835. The ''Herald'' distinguished itself from the partisan papers of the day by the policy that it published in its first issue: "We shall support no party—be the agent of no faction or coterie, and we care nothing for any election, or any candidate from president down to constable." Bennett pioneered the "extra" edition during the ''Heralds sensational coverage of the Robinson–Jewett murder case. By 1845, it was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the United States. In 1861, it circulated 84,000 copies and called itself "the most largely circulated journal in the world." Bennett stated that the function of a newspaper "is not to ...
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Henry Brougham Farnie
Henry Brougham Farnie (8 April 1836 – 21 September 1889), often called H. B. Farnie, was a British librettist and adapter of French operettas and an author. Some of his English-language versions of operettas became record-setting hits on the London stage of the 1870s and 1880s, strongly competing with the Gilbert and Sullivan operas being played at the same time. After attending Cambridge University, Farnie returned to his native Scotland, where he was appointed editor of the ''Cupar Gazette.'' In 1857, he wrote ''The Golfer's Manual'', the first book on golf instruction. In 1860, he wrote books on the flora of St Andrews and on ''The City of St. Rule''. His journalism career brought him to London in 1863 as editor of a new musical journal, ''The Orchestra''. He began to write the lyrics to popular songs, and, in 1867, he began to write plays. During the 1870s and 1880s, Farnie turned out translations and adaptations of dozens of French operas and operettas. Many of the la ...
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Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, mak ...
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Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.24 million. On the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary, Liverpool historically lay within the ancient hundred of West Derby in the county of Lancashire. It became a borough in 1207, a city in 1880, and a county borough independent of the newly-created Lancashire County Council in 1889. Its growth as a major port was paralleled by the expansion of the city throughout the Industrial Revolution. Along with general cargo, freight, and raw materials such as coal and cotton, merchants were involved in the slave trade. In the 19th century, Liverpool was a major port of departure for English and Irish emigrants to North America. It was also home to both the Cunard and White Star Lines, and was the port of registry of the ocean li ...
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Daly's Theatre (30th St
Daly's Theatre was a theatre in the City of Westminster. It was located at 2 Cranbourn Street, just off Leicester Square. It opened on 27 June 1893, and was demolished in 1937. The theatre was built for and named after the American impresario Augustin Daly, but he failed to make a success of it, and between 1895 and 1915 the British producer George Edwardes ran the house, where he presented a series of long-running musical comedies, including ''The Geisha'' (1896), and English adaptations of operettas, including ''The Merry Widow'' (1907). After Edwardes died in 1915 Daly's had one more great hit, ''The Maid of the Mountains'' (1917), which ran for 1,352 productions, but after that the fortunes of the theatre declined; Noël Coward's play ''Sirocco'' (1927) was a notable failure. By the mid-1930s Leicester Square had become better known for cinemas. Daly's was sold to Warner Brothers who demolished it and erected a large cinema on the site. History Background and early yea ...
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The Black Crook
''The Black Crook'' is a work of musical theatre first produced in New York City with great success in 1866. Many theatre writers have cautiously identified ''The Black Crook'' as the first popular piece that conforms to the modern notion of a musical.Reside, Doug"Musical of the Month: ''The Black Crook''" New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, June 2, 2011, accessed June 21, 2018 The book is by Charles M. Barras. The music, selected and arranged by Thomas Baker, consists mostly of adaptations, but it included some new songs composed for the piece, notably "You Naughty, Naughty Men". The story is a Faustian melodramatic romantic comedy, but the production became famous for its spectacular special effects and skimpy costumes. It opened on September 12, 1866 at the 3,200-seat Niblo's Garden on Broadway in Manhattan and ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. It was then toured extensively for decades and revived on Broadway in 1870–71, 1871–72 and many more times ...
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Lisa Weber
Lisa Weber ( – 24 October 1887) was a 19th-century English actress who performed in America with Lydia Thompson's burlesque troupe, and was one of Thompson's "British Blondes". Thompson recruited Weber from Covent Garden. She first appeared in America in the role of Mercury in ''Ixion'' when Thompson came to America in September 1868, followed by ''Ernani'' and ''Forty Thieves''. Weber's performance of ''Walking Down Broadway'' by Charles E. Pratt and William Lingard in ''Ixion'' was a hit.Ewen, DavidAmerican popular songs : from the Revolutionary War to the present p. 422 (1966) ("The song was introduced and popularized in 1869 by Lisa Weber in the burlesque ''Ixion, Ex-King of Thessaly'') Said to be the best vocalist of the troupe, Weber was also the first to "spin-off", returning to England in June 1869 to recruit her own troupe, which debuted at Wood's Museum in New York in January 1870 and travelled as well.(8 April 1871)The British Blondes ''Evening Argus'' (Rock Isl ...
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Pauline Markham
Pauline Markham (born Margaret Hall or Hale, May 1847 – March 20, 1919) was an Anglo-American dancer and contralto singer active on burlesque and vaudeville stages during the latter decades of the 19th century. She began by performing juvenile rôles in Manchester, made her debut on the London stage at 20 and a year later New York as a member of the ''British Blondes'' which introduced Victorian burlesque to America, where for a few years she would find phenomenal success before her career settled into a long steady decline. The critic Richard Grant White once described Markham's singing as vocal velvet and her arms as the lost arms of the Venus de Milo. Markham had studied singing with Manuel García at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Early life and career Markham was born in England and began her acting career at an early age playing principle boy parts at the Princess Theatre, Manchester. She made her London debut, not too many years later, on November 15, 1867, at t ...
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