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Wang (musical)
''Wang'' is a musical (the sheet music indicates "comic opera") with music by Woolson Morse and book and lyrics by J. Cheever Goodwin. It was first produced in New York in 1891 by DeWolf Hopper and his company and featured Della Fox.Smith, Cecil Michener and Glenn Litton, ''Musical Comedy in America: From The Black Crook Through Sweeney Todd'' (London: Routledge, 1981), 55-57 . The show mixed comic opera material with burlesque and was set in Siam. The music does not have "Oriental" color, except for the title character's first entrance – on a "full scale imitation elephant" – and the wedding and coronation marches. The show was termed an "operatic burletta" because of the burlesque convention of having Fox wearing tights. Production history ''Wang'' premiered at the now-demolished Broadway Theatre, New York City, on May 4, 1891 and closed on October 3, 1891 after 151 performances. The cast featured Helen Beresford as Nannette, Della Fox as Mataya, DeWolf Hopper as Wang, Samu ...
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Musical Theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre w ...
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Comic Opera
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue. Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, ''opera buffa'', emerged as an alternative to '' opera seria''. It quickly made its way to France, where it became ''opéra comique'', and eventually, in the following century, French operetta, with Jacques Offenbach as its most accomplished practitioner. The influence of the Italian and French forms spread to other parts of Europe. Many countries developed their own genres of comic opera, incorporating the Italian and French models along with their own musical traditions. Examples include German ''singspiel'', Viennese operetta, Spanish '' zarzuela'', Russian comic opera, English ballad and Savoy opera, North American operetta and musical comedy. Italian ''opera buffa'' In late 17th-century Italy, light-hearted m ...
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Woolson Morse
Henry Woolson Morse (February 24, 1858 – May 3, 1897), usually credited as Woolson Morse, was an American composer of musical theatre. Often working with librettist J. Cheever Goodwin, he produced several scores for Broadway productions in the 1890s. Biography Woolson Morse was born February 24, 1856, in Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts. His parents were Charles R. Morse (a relative of Samuel Morse) of Vermont, and Mary Ann Judkins of Charlestown, Massachusetts. He attended secondary school at the Noble School and studied harmony at Boston Conservatory. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then went to Paris, France, to study art. After a few years he gave that up, returned to America and took up musical composition in earnest. Career For his first major work, ''Cinderella at School'', Morse borrowed scenery and convinced a group of amateurs to produce the show at Springfield, Massachusetts.Details of Morse's biography come from a three-page typescrip ...
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DeWolf Hopper
William DeWolf Hopper (March 30, 1858September 23, 1935) was an American actor, singer, comedian, and theatrical producer. A star of vaudeville and musical theater, he became best known for performing the popular baseball poem "Casey at the Bat". Life and career Hopper was born William D'Wolf Hopper in New York City, the son of John Hopper (born 1815) and Rosalie D'Wolf (born 1827). His father was a wealthy Quaker lawyer and his mother came from a noted Colonial family. His paternal grandfather Isaac Hopper was a Philadelphia Quaker, and conductor of the Philadelphia station of the Underground Railroad. Though his parents intended that he become a lawyer, Hopper did not enjoy that profession. Hopper was called Willie as a child, and then Will or Wolfie, but when he set out on an acting career he chose his more distinguished middle name as his stage name. It was modified to "DeWolf" because of the frequency that it was mispronounced "Dwolf". He made his stage debut in New Haven ...
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Della Fox
Della May Fox (October 13, 1870 – June 15, 1913) was an American singing comedian, whose popularity peaked in the 1890s when the diminutive Fox appeared opposite the very tall DeWolf Hopper in several musicals. She also toured successfully with her own company. Biography Fox was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Andrew J. Fox, a leading St. Louis photographer who had a specialty of theatrical subjects, and Harriett Swett. She made her first appearance on stage at age 7 as the Midshipmate in a St. Louis production of ''H.M.S. Pinafore''"Della Fox Dead Here,"
''The New York Times'', June 17, 1913, p. 11.
and subsequently played children's roles with Marie Prescott's company. In 1880 she appeared as Adrienne in ''A Celebrated Case'' and came to the atte ...
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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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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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Siam
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is Template:Borders of Thailand, bordered to the north by Myanmar and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and the extremity of Myanmar. Thailand also shares maritime borders with Vietnam to the southeast, and Indonesia and India to the southwest. Bangkok is the nation's capital and largest city. Tai peoples migrated from southwestern China to mainland Southeast Asia from the 11th century. Greater India, Indianised kingdoms such as the Mon kingdoms, Mon, Khmer Empire and Monarchies of Malaysia, Malay states ruled the region, competing with Thai states such as the Kingdoms of Ngoenyang, Sukhothai Kingdom, Sukhothai, Lan Na and Ayuttha ...
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Burletta
In theater and music history, a burletta (Italian, meaning "little joke", sometimes burla or burlettina) is a brief comic opera. In eighteenth-century Italy, a burletta was the comic intermezzo between the acts of an ''opera seria''. The extended work Pergolesi's ''La serva padrona'' was also designated a "burletta" at its London premiere in 1758. In England, the term began to be used, in contrast to burlesque, for works that satirized opera but did not employ musical parody. Burlettas in English began to appear in the 1760s, the earliest identified as such being ''Midas'' by Kane O'Hara, first performed privately in 1760 near Belfast, and produced at Covent Garden in 1764. The form became debased when the term ''burletta'' began to be used for English comic or ballad operas, as a way of evading the monopoly on "legitimate drama" in London belonging to Covent Garden and Drury Lane. After the passage of the Theatres Act of 1843, which repealed crucial regulations of the Licensing A ...
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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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Alfred Klein
Alfred Asher Klein (May 12, 1861 – February 21, 1904)Record of Current Events
''The American Monthly Review of Reviews'', p. 414 (April 1904)
was an English-born stage actor, singer and comedian who appeared in operettas and musical theatre in America in the late 19th century.


Life and career

Klein was born in , in 1861, and emigrated to the United States as a young man. He had five brothers: the dramatist

Edward Siedle
Edward Siedle (May 30, 1858 - March 30, 1925) (pronounced Seed-el) was an American property master and technical director who worked mainly at the Metropolitan Opera. During his tenure at The Met, he was directly in charge of all technical elements through one of its most innovative eras. Biography Siedle was born in Dulwich, England, on May 30, 1858. His parents were both German. He emigrated to the United States in 1878. In 1883, he married Caroline Siedle, a costume designer for theatre. They had a son named Edward Vincent Siedle who was born around 1888. The 1900 US Census lists their residence as Westchester. By 1907, they were living in Ludlow Park, Yonkers. Caroline died in 1907. Siedle remarried. Siedle's sister, Philippine Siedle, an opera singer, was married to composer Julian Edwards. His son, Edward Vincent Siedle, served on the Mexican border in 1916 and in France as a captain in the 369th United States Infantry. He received the Croix de Guerre. Siedle was described ...
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