Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to one and all. I hope everyone is enjoying a happy and safe holiday. I hope Santa was good to all you good boys and girls out there. Among the battery operated toys and wrapping paper I received a few great musical prezzies:

• Vocal score of a concert version of Edward German's Merrie England
• Vocal score of a concert version of Montague Phillips operetta The Rebel Maid (1921)
• A bound library vocal score of The Gondoliers to replace my very used Schirmer copy
• The 2-CD set of the Bognor Regis (UK) Music Society's June 2008 concert of Sidney Jones' 1898 operetta/musical comedy A Greek Slave (wow!)
• A DVD of the BBC docu-drama on the life of the Edwardian music hall queen Marie Lloyd

Florodora Production Details

The details have been finally worked out and I can tell you that Florodora will be presented August 1st and 2nd 2009 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts downtown on Castro Street in the SecondStage theater space. I will be stage directing and Neil Midkiff will be Music Director. As a celebration of reaching the 10th Discovery show, Florodora will be presented with a new orchestration accompanied by the Lyric Theatre Salon Orchestra.

We are working on a Discovery performing edition, with a new modern vocal score and orchestra parts based on the original score and parts with matching midi files. We are working hard to get the performing materials finished so we can cast Florodora as early as possible - and especially so cast members can start to learn the music well in advance.

We'll begin rehearsals approx June 29th with a full week of music rehearsals. Because of the addition of the orchestra, we've scheduled the luxury of an extra full week of rehearsals AND there will also bean in-venue dress rehearsal on the evening of Friday July 31st - as well as orchestra rehearsals and a sitzprobe in the Lyric warehouse.

Florodora will be a lot of fun and, naturally, the Greatest Show Ever.

Audition dates and other details soon. Watch this space!

Florodora Book Is Really Funny

Neil Midkiff and I have been editing a performing edition of the Florodora libretto. The dialog is very, very funny and chocked full of jokes and good puns. We are mergeing the best from two similar sources, a printed libretto from an English revival (date unknown) and somewhat Americanized version which seems a bit earlier.

Most of the English characters are funny, led forcefully by the Lady Holyrood character who has some of the best jokes involving marriage and other social commentary.

Librettist Owen Hall (James Davis) really did a good job with this one!

What Became of the Florodora BOYS?

I'm hoping a lot of people will want to be able to boast of joining the famous theatrical ranks Florodora Girls and Florodora Boys.

Speaking of Florodora Boys, this scene from a very early comedy-variety talkie in 1929 speculated of the fate of the original 6 Florodora Boys - the actors who played The Clerks who are the love interests for the Florodora Girls. The original actresses all left the show and married millionaires. But what ever happened to the boys???

"The Show of Shows" features early comedy films stars Heine Conklin, Lupino Lane, Bert Roach, Ben Turpin, and Lloyd Hamilton as Messrs Sims, Pym, Apfelbaum, Haskell, Grogan and Scott. There's an amusing but longish introduction to get past. The number - a take-off on Tell me Pretty Maiden - begins about a minute-and-a-half into the clip. Note the Florodora Girl line cakewalk blocking strongly resembles the entrance step in the clip from the Florodora Girl movie (see previous posting).



(In real life, one of the Florodora boys in an early revival was Milton Berle. He did quite well).

Vamping Until Sunday...

I hope to get the greenlight from the Lyric PTBs at Sunday's BoD meeting and then share all the exciting details. Any and all moral support for the BoD meeting gleefully accepted. The Board needs to vote on the budget, venue and artistic staff. I promise, then, that all will be revealed.

In the meantime, work is being done on the score and the libretto. The plan is to have a brand new much improved Florodora vocal score and matching midi files in people's hands as early as possible.

It all sounds bright and fun and will be a hoot to perform.

The Florodora Cocktail V2

I tried a Florodora Cocktail during Thanksgiving. It is a summer-y sort of punch drink, at least the basic version. The "imperial" version with cognac might pack a little more, oh, whats the word, punch.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everybody has a wonderful, restful and happy Thanksgiving.

The Name "Florodora"

Legend has it that the name of the show, the word"Florodora", was cooked up with the help of the J. Grossmith & Son London firm of perfumers.

It is supposed to be "love the smell of flowers" not "Adore flora". But it has been often misspelled "Floradora" ever since. (Floradora is the brand name of a design of Royal Doulton dishware, among other things).

Unlike G&S Operettas, it has no subtitle, although "The Queen of the Philippine Islands" is often cited. The score merely says "A Musical Comedy".

Vamping Until Ready...

I'm waiting on final paperwork for the venue and action from the GSSSJ Board to announce specifics about the Florodora Discovery production.

I'd like people to keep August 1st and 2nd, 2009 clear.

In the meantime, I'll keep vamping - posting Florodora Fun Facts as I learn them.

The Florodora Girl (1930) Movie

In this 1930 movie, Daisy Dell (played by Marion Davies) is the last of the famous Florodora Girls not to be married. Daisy is awkward and shy until she meets and falls in love with Jack Vibart (Lawrence Gray). Jack falls for Daisy but his Mother persuades Daisy to stay away so that the wealthy family won't be disgraced. In this final reel (shot in two-tone Technicolor) Jack follows Daisy out onto the stage during a performance to propose marriage.



This clip shows the re-creation of the famous Act 2 sextette Tell Me Pretty Maiden, the only number from Florodora in the movie. The choreography shown is very close to genuine. The stage at New York's Casino Theater was quite shallow, which accounts for the straight lines and limited movement of the ensemble. Costumes are more Hollywood than the modest originals. The chorus number actually has a less famous second verse, which is not sung in the film, in which the girls quiz the boys. The verse will be included in our Discovery staging.

Marion Davies life story was very close to the life of a Florodora Girl, having been whisked out of the Ziegfeld Follies by William Randolph Hurst, who footed the bill for a number of her films (she's listed as Producer of The Florodora Girl).

The New York production of Florodora originally had a chorister named Daisy Green (not Dell) though its not clear whether she was the last to be whisked off the stage by a rich suitor. The cast list includes a character named "Daisy Chain" as one of the six English Girls.

Thanks to Neil Midkiff for a copy of the film.

The First Cast Recording

In September and October of 1900, the two-year-old Gramophone Company of London invited cast members from Florodora to make recordings of the songs that they were singing every night in the show. The world's first ever "original cast recording" was created in four sessions, comprising 14 seven-inch disks (the longer playing - by about a minute - higher fidelity 10-inch 78 rpm hadn't yet been invented).

It was a big gamble. The primitive recording technology of the day better captured louder, and often less accomplished, singers. The Florodora cast members persevered, giving themselves a place in history and giving us an important record of the style of performance in the original production.

In Lady Holyrood's solo numbers, actress Ada Reeve practically recites many of her numbers music hall style. Some of this clipped delivery might be exaggerated so that the words came through on the recording, but contemporary accounts and reviews also tell us of her comic melodrama style. Now we can hear it. Indeed in the vocal score the notes in the vocal line of the number are represented in all sixteenth notes - and now we know why.

Florodora's composer, Leslie Stuart, happened to be filling in as conductor at the Lyric Theatre during this time and joined in on the recording sessions as accompanist on a day of these recordings. We can safely assume those numbers are delivered in a manner that the composer approved of! Paul Rubens, lyricist, also accompanies the recordings. (Rubens soon became a noted composer/lyricist of many West End hit musicals).

Eleven of these original Florodora recordings were released on a modern CD by Pearl records in 1993 and though now discontinued, new and used copies can still be found on the Internet. The recordings are understandably low fidelity, but give us another connection to the Florodora Days.

Happy 109th Birthday, Florodora

Florodora opened exactly 109 years ago today, November 11th, 1899 at the Lyric Theatre in London where it originally ran for 455 performances!

The Florodora Cocktail

I've gotta try this one after a long day of scanning:

60 ml London dry gin
15 ml fresh lime juice
15 ml Chambord liqueur (or BOLS Raspberry, Framboise, etc)
Ginger ale

For a Florodora "Imperial Style" replace the Gin with Cognac. Yum.

Shake well with 4 to 5 ice cubes in a chilled cocktail shaker, then pour unstrained into a Collins glass and top off with the cold ginger ale. Lime Wedge garnish.

I'll take two!

Florodora In Joyce and Woodhouse

Florodora shows up in the oddest places...

The tenor song in Florodora, In the Shade of the Palm, is artfully mis-quoted all through the Sirens chapter of Joyce's Ulysses. In Florodora, the heroic tenor Frank Abercoed tells his beloved Dolores that he'll return if she but waits patiently for him. Get it?

In The Adventures of Sally by P.G. Wodehouse takes a swipe at all of the actresses who ever claimed to be a Florodora Girl:

Sally was disappointed, but it was such a beautiful morning, and New York was so wonderful after the dull voyage in the liner that she was not going to allow herself to be depressed without good reason. After all, she could go on to Detroit tomorrow. It was nice to have something to which she could look forward.

"Oh, is Elsa in the company?" she said.

"Sure. And very good too, I hear." Mrs. Meecher kept abreast of theatrical gossip. She was an ex-member of the profession herself, having been in the first production of "Florodora," though, unlike everybody else, not one of the original Sextette. "Mr. Faucitt was down to see a rehearsal, and he said Miss Doland was fine. And he's not easy to please, as you know."

Scanning Old Parts

Scanning, scanning, scanning.

The Florodora vocal score is scanned and now I'm scanning the orchestra parts. Some of the orchestra parts are quite old and fragile and have a lot of edge damage from years of quick page turns and many repaired tears fixed with - now yellowing - tape. The binding on the covers is quite old and the deteriorating tape on rips and replaced adjacent pages is sticking together. And as with all old ephemera, the acid in the paper is causing some foxing and ink is fading a bit, but this isn't an issue - yet.

All this, you can imagine, makes the scanning (even more) tedious. So far, the 14 numbers comprising the cello parts of Act 1 need the most TLC. They are the top of the list for re-entering in a modern notation program.

But - happy news - most of the orchestra parts are VERY readable and still could be used out of the box. In fact, some of the pages never seem to have been used (well not, say within the last 50+ years). The second act was most recently re-copied very meticulously by hand for all of the parts on very good paper.

At one time there must have been at least 14 full sets of Florodora in circulation - these parts are marked "Set 'N'", and I have a couple of books marked "Set 'H'". Some have "1952" written on the cover.

Even if we can't do the Discovery with full orchestra, I will feel good having preserved Florodora. Too many of these old shows have lost their orchestrations over the years.

Random Coincidences

Random coincidences will occur, especially in the incestuous world of theater. There are going to be many surrounding a show as big as Florodora, but here are two that strike me as particularly fun factoids :

• In the original N.Y. production of Florodora Lady Holyrood was played by the actress/singer Edna Wallace Hopper (right). Edna was the estranged wife of actor William DeWolf Hopper - who played Ravenne in Erminie. Edna was a San Francisco native and from all accounts led a rather colorful life.
  
• The original London production of Florodora premiered at the Lyric Theatre which some of you might recall was built from the proceeds from Dorothy, a previous Discovery production. Just as Dorothy far outran The Mikado, Florodora far outran The Rose of Persia.

I like to find out about the people who starred in and created the shows as it gives me a better feeling of connection to the material.

Considerably More 'Go'

In 1906, Florodora composer Leslie Stuart (right) was asked in an interview about being judged against the example of Gilbert and Sullivan. He said, "We living composers either imitate - unpardonable sin - or do not imitate - which is worse".


Florodora - having premiered in the same city and the same month as The Rose of Persia - would naturally be compared to Savoy Operas. Tom B. Davis, a Florodora producer, commented: "In some respects it may be said to resemble a Savoy Opera, but with all due respect to those really, in many cases beautiful creations, Florodora has considerably more 'go' than they have, whilst about its music, it has that peculiar charm that Stuart seems to have made so peculiarly his own".


By the time he composed Florodora 36-year-old Stuart (real name, Thomas Barrett) was already an established composer of popular song and contributor to musical comedies. In the British Empire he was famous as composer of the song Soldiers of the Queen (or King, depending...) and a large number of once popular but now entirely regrettable music hall "coon" songs.


Well aware that he lived and composed in the long shadow of a master, a portrait of Sullivan hung above the reed organ on which Stuart composed. His own compositions were more in the style of popular music and more 20th century rhythmic invention, utilizing more counterpoint, syncopation, layering, and an abundance of dotted meters in, on average, brighter, brisker tempi. In the biography "Leslie Stuart - The Man Who Composed Florodora" Andrew Lamb writes:

Altogether, Leslie Stuart was surely more adventurous than Sullivan in the way he set out to create effects, even if those effects did not always succeed in the way that Sullivan's painstaking settings of his lyricists words did.

Why Florodora?

Florodora was the world's first international mega-musical. As time went on it became a showbiz legend - the first musical theater legend. Almost 30 years before Showboat, before Oklahoma!, before Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera there was Florodora, which showed what could happen when a stage musical permeates popular culture. Liken it to how Pinafore electrified the world of operetta twenty years earlier.

There was Florodora soap, clasps, hats, cigars and, of course, perfume. The Gibson Girl was replaced by the Florodora Girl. Every major town in the English speaking world saw a production or tour. The world's first ever cast recording was of, you guessed it, Florodora.

Florodora opened in London in 1899 and ran for nearly 3 years and was almost immediately revived. The next year saw an even longer run on Broadway in New York City. Florodora circled the globe to every major city. It opened in Seattle in 1901 and eventually in the Bay Area in 1907. It achieved the financial success and lasting fame that every major musical was measured against for decades.

"They are goddesses, the first of their class to immortalize the chorus girl," one critic stated in fulsome tribute to the damsels.

The much hyped celebrities of Florodora, The Six Florodora Girls, became international celebrities and for no rational reason, were whisked off the stage by rich bachelors at an astounding rate. During the two year run of the show in London and New York, hundreds of women were replaced in the role, and even more claimed to have been.

In San Francisco, ballet audiences were given the chance to vote on which choristers would become the Florodora Girls! In reality, as you can see, they weren't "chorus girls" as we know them, but very well coiffed, stylish and modestly costumed English ladies.

Whether or not you'll think that Florodora is the greatest show ever composed, its music was known and played for years. Celebrities kept Florodora on their bios for their entire lives - Milton Berle kept it on his resume (as a youth he was a Florodora Boy), Gypsy Rose Lee's mother claimed to have been a Florodora Girl, In My Man (1928) Fannie Brice sang "I Was a Florodora Baby,". The lives of the "original six" were chronicled until their deaths. Harry Truman played selections on the piano while in the White House. There was a feature movie in 1930, The Florodora Girl, and reference to the show appeared in literature and advertising for decades. Evelyn Nesbitt, the notorious femme fatale of Ragtime fame, was a chorister in the show (though it is unclear whether she was ever actually one of THE Six).

And we get to perform it, see it and hear it next summer!

Where Things Stand

We have applied for a venue and dates for the show and as soon as they are confirmed, they'll be posted here. I think the venue will prove exciting, convenient and commodious. It is a little different from the spaces where we've performed Discovery shows before. Tantalized? Stay tuned.

Ann Byler and I are getting together to look over the orchestrations and work out other issues concerning having the orchestra join in on the fun. The pars are old, but many of them are quite readable and serviceable - in fact it looks as though some have never been used. how much we re-create will depend on staffing, speaking of which...

Ann Byler is also the head of the Production Staffing committee. Lyric needs to select the production staff for Florodora. Soon.

I've got two unedited librettos of the Florodora in electronic format. As with most shows we look at for Discovery, Florodora has undergone many changes in the last 109 years. I feel particularly lucky to have found a libretto which corresponds to the numbers and their order in the band parts, although we are missing the vocal line to a couple of songs and the re-written Act 2 finale (it is a restatement of a previous song as say, Pirates, so shouldn't be too hard to re-construct). Thankfully, Act 1 is virtually identical in every way and every source.

I'm on a global hunt (via e-mail) for those missing numbers and will post progress. Those numbers are a particularly tantalizing riddle - we have the lyrics and the orchestral accompaniment, just not the vocal lines! We don't know when they were added to the show. In the end the sheet music may be found, the tunes may be (mostly) reconstructible from the orchestration, or the numbers may have to be cut.

In my search thus far, I've contacted musicologists, orchestrators and operetta lovers worldwide. They all wish us luck and can't wait to see and hear the finished result.

Welcome to Floroblog!

I've decided to create a blog for the upcoming Discovery show Florodora to help Discoverites understand, participate and comment on the process of creating our Discovery 2009 production. I hope that by opening the ongoing process of reviving a Discovery show, the Lyric Theatre community will get more involved and excited. Until now, the process of revival has been somewhat opaque - naturally since a relatively small (but intense) production team has worked on the performing editions and the various issues surrounding the show revivals.

I'd like to change that and rev-up enthusiasm and interest by both opening up the process and, when appropriate, asking for help from other volunteers. For some of the tasks, individual or small group effort will be the most appropriate, and for others the participation and enthusiasm of others will be encouraged.

Florodora is a smashing show (much more about it later) and will be a lot of fun. As our 10th Discovery (could it have been that many already?) many know that I have the fool idea of presenting Florodora with orchestra, extending the Lyric community of performers involved in Discovery to our fine orchestra, and serving up to the audience - as a one-off - with the color and delight of the orchestral music of a staged version.

I don't expect all too many of you will be interested in the academic research involved in digging up the up scarce source materials - but I hope some might and there's always work to do there. I don't expect solving the puzzles of the various production aspects will appeal to everyone, either - but some might be interested in helping and there's always work to do there solving problems both practical and process to streamline and present an even greater show.

It doesn't stretch the imagination that staging a Discovery with an orchestra - dozens of more people - will involve more work and require more volunteer dedication and perseverance. I KNOW we can build on - and improve upon - the experience of Merrie England, Rose of Persia, The Maid of the Mountains, Robin Hood, Dorothy, The Arcadians, The Serenade, The Quaker Girl, Erminie and now, Florodora. Gosh, what a list!

So please subscribe to the blog to see posts all about Florodora - the revival and the production process - announcements, and the occasional appeal for volunteers and, if you can, reply with constructive ideas and comments. Thanks.