Florodora Lives

Last night, August 1st, 2009, for the first time in who-knows-how-long, a full cast of performers acted through all of Florodora's scenes and songs and hilarious dialog with Lyric Theatre's great sounding salon orchestra to a very enthusiastic sold-out house. Florodora returned to the stage and radiantly shined.

A year ago I'd have given odds of 10-1 against this ever happening. But it really happened.

San Jose Mercury Three Things To Do Tomorrow

On Saturday Aug 1st, our Florodora revival was listed in the San Jose Mercury News as one of "Three Things To Do Tomorrow". By the time the issue went to press, we had already sold out our Sunday August 2nd performance!

A Show For Any G&S Group

The performing edition of Florodora which we have created, with its new vocal score, revised performing edition libretto, midi practice files and band parts would be a perfect fit for the repertoire of any G&S performing group.

Florodora Sold Out

Our short run of Florodora has sold out! Interest is very high and the buzz around the show is simply amazing.

Down To The Wire

An intense week for run throughs of Florodora but the result is a great sounding, funny show. The cast has found their characters and the fun, silly character of the Florodora. The orchestra and the new orchestrations sound great and we have been working on lights and other production elements. I've been very very lucky to get such a great cast and orchestra and crew.

People genuinely seem to like Florodora. It is understandable - it was written to be a very popular, appealing, mass-market show with, to mis-quote Anthony Tweedlepunch, "bumps of operetta, music hall and variety that stand out like watermelons". Whats not to like?

Both shows are approaching sold out houses. The buzz is very good. Light the lights! Here comes Florodora.

(I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with myself next week. Oh, yeah, that "day job"...)

T-minus One Week

Today is the Florodora sitzprobe. Cast meets orchestra for the first time in our production and I daresay in any production of Florodora for a while. The show is sounding and looking wonderful and I know it will be a lot of fun for both the cast and the audience come (gulp) next Saturday at the Mountain View Center.

It's Florodora days once more!

At right is a 1927 advert for Elgin watches. I guess these days my watch does harken me back for Florodora. Almost daily.

Florodora and Baby Doe Tabor

Michael Crozier, our Cyrus Gilfain in Lyric Theatre's upcoming Florodora is also involved with Berkeley Opera's production of Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe. According to this website of "Opera Performances in Old Colorado"
(http://operapronto.home.comcast.net/~operapronto/performances.pt2.html)
Florodora played at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado on Jun 24th 1907.

This was 8 years after Horace Tabor died, but Baby Doe was still alive and, I presume, living at the Matchless Mine. I'm guessing that she was probably too distressed by 1907 to see this production of Florodora, but you never know.....

Florodora is like the Kevin Bacon of musical comedies, with more music history connections than even Cellier's Dorothy.

The Ensemble Sounds GREAT!

The ensemble sounds GREAT! A lot of dedicated people have really worked very hard to learn the score. It is absolutely marvelous to be able to hear all the vocal lines. Our production will have 21 voices, with a full double sextet as well as the individual lead vocal lines and a 10-piece salon orchestra.

It is amazing! I've only imagined what Florodora might sound like from listening to Midi - which really just can't give the correct vocal effect. I can't wait to hear what it sounds like when it gets put together with our orchestra (sitzprobe, July 25th is the first time cast meets orchestra).

They sang Florodora songs in public!

Last night during a cabaret at the Cafe Trieste in San Jose, soloist from Lyric Theatre sang two numbers from Florodora - and not the two numbers that most people might imagine! Cara Arellano (who is playing Lady Holyrood) sang the tounge-twisting When I Leave Town and Diane Squires (playing Dolores in our upcoming show) gave a beautiful rendition of Paul Ruben's The Queen of the Philippine Islands. In all probability it is the first time anything from Florodora, especially these two great numbers, got a public airing 'round these parts in a very long time.

The energetic and enthusiastically received program included numbers from Lyric's current and next season.

In other developments, we also found a Welsh Harp to use as a prop in act 2.

Florodora Premiered in S.F. on September 30, 1901

Florodora premiered in San Francisco on September 30, 1901 in the Columbia Theatre, once at Powell and Ellis streets, destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire (resurrected in 1910 as the home of the A.C.T.). This is much earlier than I had previously thought! The Oct 1st 1901 review of the original S.F. production is online in the Library of Congress archives of the San Francisco Call newspaper (text below):

SAN FRANCISCO is now lined up with the rest of the earth on the "Florodora" question; "Floradora" has come, been seen, and has conquered. Every seat was filled last night at the Columbia to greet the tuneful comedy, and almost as many people forgot they were standing for the two acts and three hours of the bright nonsense that "Florodora" brings to town. Owen Hall, who wrote the book of "The Geisha," has written a vastly smarter one for '"Florodora." achieving an almost Oscar Wilde figure in the satiric society widow, Lady Holyrood. The plot has a little more fiber than is common with its kind, the lines are sufficiently bright, and the book is fitted to catchy, sparkling melodies throughout, for which Mr. Leslie Stewart [sic] is responsible. The mountings are rich and picturesque, and the costumes bright, smart, novel and fresh, and there is a chorus that goes like clockwork, with the aid of an apparently unlimited number of pretty girls and spruce young men. The orchestra, too, is a considerable feature, and under Mr. Pallma's [?] competent baton is very pleasing.

Florodora as everybody knows, is one of the Philippine islands, that has been stolen from a lone, lorn orphan, Dolores, by a respectable British [sic] pirate, Cyrus W. Gilfain by name. Gilfain has also pirated Dolores' lamented papa's recipe for the famous Florodora perfume, by which the bloated monopolist has succeeded in acquiring a millionaireship. His attempt to keep the secret of his odorous crime by trying to marry the orphan, and his amusing adventures among the English aristocracy, form the basis of the story, worked out with a rich and racy humor by Owen Hall, who has had more American millionaires than Astor in London to draw from.

The part of Gilfain is well taken by W. T. Carleton. who makes his appearance here after too long an absence. He looks the planter excellently, sings his songs in a sweet, though not strong voice, and filling all other requirements of the role. The prettiest thing in the play is Miss Grace Dudley, a delicate and dainty little lady who takes the Lady Holyrood part. She dances like a fairy, as the children say and has snap, air, vim enough to supply the crowd. She is everything she should be, this chic and piquant little damsel, pretty as a picture, too, but she can't sing, any more than can Miss Millard, who is the Dolores of the cast. Miss-Millard wears the only tights in the "Florodora" crowd to admiration, and looks just the petulant Tivoli [The S.F. Opera House at the time] cherub we all remember, but she has not yet learned how to sing. Frances Gordon is another pretty maiden, and is charming as Angela Gilfain.

Mr. Bowers, as Frank Abercoed. was very pleasing, and has a smooth and sweet voice that appears in "Under the Palms" to best advantage, Philip Ryley is the comedian, and a beautifully unearthly figure he is as Anthony Tweedlepunch. He is funny in a felicitously original fashion and has a splendid part as Tweedlepuneh. "Tell Me, Pretty Maiden." sung by the double sextet, is probably one of the prettiest numbers ever seen on the local stage, and was encored time and again by the audience, which went away at 11:15 whistling it.

"Florodora" has certainly "arrived.

And on August 1st and 2nd, 2009 it will again!

One could spend hours reading these online newspapers for references to Florodora. There are 3080 search results for Florodora in the newspaper archive just through 1910, though a lot of them are cigar advertisements, and those are only the pages where the word was indexed.

April 9, 1905 - Florodora in San Francisco

Correction: I had previously written that Florodora found its way to the San Francisco area in 1907. Previously, I had only found early references to a production of Florodora at Idora Park in Oakland, staged there because of the damage to S.F. theaters due to the 1906 quake.

Now I've come across a reference and an advert for Florodora production at the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco - the major performing arts house at the time - in April 1905. First I found a short reference in Week's Offerings at the Theaters in the San Francisco Call newspaper dated April 23, 1905 in the With the Players and Music Folk section on page 19. The paragraph reads:

The Tivoli is enjoying success with its good production of "Florodora" that, it should be remembered, may now be seen for the first time at popular prices.

You can see the whole newspaper page here, though you have to zoom in the the second column from the right, three paragraphs above the lower right photo to find the text quoted above.Later in the newspaper on page 35, there is the ad, shown above. From this I was able to determine that the show opened in San Francisco on April 9, 1905. But, it also says "Better Than The Original", and I don't know whether that means the original N.Y. or London productions or if it is a reference to an even earlier San Francisco opening of Florodora. The paucity of the review suggests there is an even earlier S.F. production to find.

Top ticket price of 75 cents and the California Beauty Sextet! The review from April 10, 1905 is below.

The Mountain View California-Florodora Connection

There had to be a Mountain View-Florodora connection, and there is: Delphin Michael Delmas (right).

Who you may ask was Delphin Michael Delmas? He was a farmer, dam builder, district attorney, defense attorney, Regent of the University of California, presidential nominator, who was born in France in 1844 but moved to Santa Clara in 1854. A graduate of Santa Clara, and Yale, he came to own 600 acres in Mountain View near El Camino and Bernardo (before it was Sunnyvale).

The Florodora connection? One of the most prominent attorney's of his day, he was the defense attorney in the "crime of the century" defending Harry K Thaw in the murder of Stanford White in New York. The case was the notorious Florodora Girl Evelyn Nesbit love triangle made famous in the movie and musical Ragtime. (Delphin got Harry acquitted by reason of insanity!)

You can read all about Delphin M, Delmas at the Rengstoff House website.

Oh, well there is another Mountain View connection, though more tenuous: San Francisco native Edna May Wallace who played Lady Holyrood in the original New York production of Florodora is one of the notables buried in the Mountain View Cemetery - in Oakland.

Florodora Casting Is Complete...

I am proud to announce the cast of the Lyric Theatre Discovery Series 2009 revival production of Leslie Stuart's musical theater legend Florodora

Cyrus W. Gilfain.... Michael Crozier
Frank Abercoed..... Nicholas Patton
Capt. Arthur Donegal...... David Powell
Anthony Tweedlepunch.. Mark Blattel
Leandro..... Daniel Zulevic
Dolores..... Diane Squires
Lady Holyrood..... Cara Arellano
Angela Gilfain..... Elinor Gates
Valleda.....

Islanders and English ("Florodora") Girls....

Pat Grennan, Connie Kleinjans, Kathy Kriese, Carol Ann Parker, Rebecca Sacks, Dana Tomasino

Clerks, Islanders and Florodora Boys.....

Mark Baushke, Francis Campana, Mike Ewaska, Gavan Kwan, Bob March, Ed Wei

And the Lyric Theatre Salon Orchestra.....

Violin... Barbara Rumsby
Viola... Goetz Leonhardt
Cello... Madeleine Graham
Bass... Linda Jansen
Flute... Lisa Lawrence
Clarinet... Linda Wilson
Trumpet... Chris Wilhite
Trombone... Jeff Yaeger
Percussion... Justin Horn
Piano... Bruce Herman

Florodora in Summer MVCPA Preview Magazine

There is an advert for our Discovery production of Florodora in the Summer issue of Preview, the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts magazine:

One Tenor Shy of a Full Perfume Factory

We are almost fully cast. We are currently one ensemble tenor shy of a full perfume factory. That is to say that we almost have the six clerks, the six English Girls and the 9 named lead characters fully cast. I'll be publishing a cast list shortly.

Sunday in the Park With George Florodora Sighting

by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. In act two:

George: He denied conventional perspective and conventional space.

Marie: He was unconventional in his liferstyle as well
(ad-libbing again)

So was I! You know I was a Florodora Girl for a short time -- when I left Charleston and before I was married to my first husband --

George (Interrupting her): Marie. Marie!!

Important Dates

Aside from our usual rehearsal schedule commencing on June 29th, here are dates to keep open:

• Saturday May 30 - time TBD Tentative date for our Florodora read through, familiarization session and potluck BBQ at my house. More information very soon.
• Saturday July 25 1-4pm (time tentative) Sitzprobe at the Lyric Warehouse.
• Friday July 31 - In-venue dress rehearsal at the MVCPA. Call at 6pm. Note that Thursday July 30 is currently scheduled as no rehearsals dark night for the produciton.

Owen Hall, librettist (or, OK, One More Florodora Background Tidbit)

The standard references in the literature about the Florodora librettist Owen Hall (real name: James Davis, 10 April 1853 - 9 April 1907) are sparse, and on the whole, rather offhand. The pseudonym "Owen Hall" was an ironic nod ('owing all') towards his extensive debts. Another of his pseudonyms was "Payne Nunn." In fact, the was astoundingly prolific during the late Victorian and Edwardian era, and going from the text of our show, quite a good humorist and obviously a well-read literate fellow (as one might expect from a University of London graduate).

As evidence, Neil Midkiff writes of the lyrics in the clerk's sextet in act 1: "In reading a biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the English lexicographer, I was surprised to find a reference to "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" in a quotation from a 1782 letter from Boswell to another friend of Johnson. I had thought those names were invented by Lewis Carroll for _Through the Looking-Glass_, but it turns out that they date back at least to 1725, when an English poet and diarist compared Handel and Bononcini (then in rivalry for superiority in London's musical scene) to these indistinguishable pair of puny rivals from a traditional nursery rhyme."

Well, it has been a while...

No blog updates in a while, sorry. I've been busy with that pesky day job and logistics surrounding the Florodora performances. This blog will soon start to change direction a little with a director's ramble and more specific information about our revival production.

Crikey Bonza Sheila Gal - Got Any Mates Back In Oz?

I've just received a pre-press of an article (from Andrew Lamb) for the Summer 2009 edition of On Stage, the quarterly newsletter of Theatre Heritage Australia Inc. The article recounts composer Leslie Stuart's amusing memoir of his Australian "inspiration" for Tell Me Pretty Maiden and a bit more about the original creative conflict surrounding the now famous double sextette from Florodora.

Stuart relates that some of the original blocking of TMPM is his own!

The article is unfortunately only a jpeg scan, but it is legible. You can find the pages here and here.

There will also be a streamed webcast of excerpts of highlights from a 1946 Australian radio broadcast of Stuart's 1911 Musical Comedy Peggy on April 14 from Melbourne FM 96.5 between their time 9pm and 11pm. Victoria, Australia is 18 hours ahead of US PDT which puts the webcast for us Californians unfortunately at (yawn) 4am Tuesday morning April 14. Sigh.

Gotta find me some webcast recording software for Windoze...

Land Of My Home

The act 2 song Land of my Home appears in the orchestra parts for Florodora, and in two libretti but, oddly enough, not in the standard vocal score for the show. The vocal score contains many alternate numbers written for various versions and revivals of the show, but not this one, though it appeared originally, in a 1920 revival and presuming a date of the orchestra parts, as late as the 1950's.

The problem was finding the vocal line so we could include it in the show. We had the orchestration and the words, but no vocal line and no piano reduction for the song. Neil Midkiff has reconstructed the vocal line and arranged an accompaniment from the orchestrations, using ample instrument doubling as the clues to the tune.

I mentioned this number in an email to Ken Reeves, a musical researcher in England, and he has gone back to an 1899 score in the British Library (logo at right - not a picture of Ken Reeves :-) He was kind enough to call up that old manuscript and copy out the original piano vocal reduction of Land of my Home and mail it to me.

I like Neil's version. Of course I'll leave it up to him what material of the original to adopt, of course, but we'll be able to present this tenor ballad in our concert version of Florodora, probably the first hearing in a very long time.

This Week In Florodora...

Tucked away in the US Library of Congress and mis-catalogued under the name Floradora, I found this listing for a 30 page book. It has too few pages to be a vocal score and too many for a sheet music song, so I was rather hoping the entry was another source libretto. I applied for a photocopy some weeks ago and it finally arrived on Thursday. It turns out this holding is a book of lyrics which is stamped "Received at the LOC on Dec 11 1899" - just a month after the show's opening in London and a year before it opened in New York. This helps yield some clues into the original order of numbers and lyrics, many of which were probably printed before the musical was finished, as the meter of the poetry in this lyric book doesn't exactly match the rhythms of the music from the vocal score.

One of the mysteries, the number Land of my Home, appears in this book of lyrics. So, contrary to a number of sources, it was at least intended for the original production.

Florodora auditions will be announced shortly. We also have a preliminary calendar very similar to what you might expect for a Discovery show, but with a mandatory orchestra sitzprobe (tentatively Saturday July 25th at 1 pm), a couple orchestra run-thrus in the warehouse, and the dress rehearsal at the venue on July 31st.

I received an e-mail from Ken Reeves, a scholar of stage musicals of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. Ken is currently presenting a series on early musicals at the Westminster Public Reference Library in central London. On 24 March he'll be leading an audience participation presentation of The Shop Girl, the 1894 Gaiety musical. We've struck up a dialog about Florodora.

You can visit Ken's website at www.hobbyist.co.uk/postcards/earlybritishmusicals

Tell all your friends. Florodora is going to be fun!

I Was A Florodora Baby

In the stage revue Ziegfeld Follies of 1920, "Funny Girl" Fanny Brice sang the song I Was a Florodora Baby in which she croons "...the other five got married for money, and I got married for love". The song was a big pop hit 21 years after Florodora first opened!

That song and legend of the Florodora Girl still remained in popular culture and Brice again sang the number in the Warner Brothers Vitaphone (sound from phonograph records) film My Man in 1928.

Here is an excerpt from the Vitaphone disc featuring Brice singing I Was a Florodora Baby (complete with an affected New Yawk Yiddishe accent and pronounciation). After the song, the sound track continues with some dialog underscored by the orchestration of Tell Me Pretty Maiden from Stuart's Florodora score.

Florodora In Paris

The successful Florodora opening in Paris noted in the NY Times, January 28, 1903. The encored cakewalk mentioned is undoubtedly Tell Me Pretty Maiden.
(note they misspelled the composer's name and call it an operetta). I wonder if a libretto or score survives in French?

Draft Performing Edition - January 2009

A draft performing edition of Florodora including the new vocal score, libretto and midi files are available. If you didn't recently receive and email with a link to them and would like to take a look, please send me an email and I'll provide a link to the materials.

1952 Florodora Glasgow Connections

I've recently acquired a programme for a professional production of Florodora in Glasgow, Scotland in 1952. Old programs give an idea of how the show changed over time and yield insights into why the vocal score and orchestra parts came to be as they are. In the programme I found two surprises:

• The Music Director and production manager was Cyril Dawson. The orchestra parts in my colection have two numbers where Mr. Dawson credited as doing the orchestrations

• The theater assistant manager was Durward Lely. He was the son of the original D'Oyly Carte tenor Durward Lely Sr. who created the role of Nanki-Poo in The Mikado among many others.

The programme also includes the name of rights holders which also appear in some of the old orchestra parts and, of course, the list of lead actors. The only one I can track down on the intertubes is long-time British actress Hilda Campbell-Russell (right) who played the role of Lady Holyrood on that tour.

There are indications that the parts were used in the early 1950's. While it is tantalizing, one can't know whether they were used for this Florodora tour. Still, finding these connections is so much fun and connects me to the show even more.

Oysters Florodora

OK, so I know that oysters aren't every body's favorite food, but in the Florodora days they were quite a delicacy. As yet another example of how the show wove its way into popular culture, I ran across this recipe for Oysters Florodora:

MELT three tablespoonfuls of butter in a pan;
add four tablespoonfuls of flour and stir till smooth;
then add one-half teaspoonful of dry mustard,
a half teaspoonful of paprika,
a teaspoon of minced parsley,
two table-spoonfuls of lemon-juice,
two of Worcestershire sauce,
salt and one and
one-half cupfuls of strained oyster liquor

When the sauce is hot and bubbling drop in a pint of oysters, that have been carefully looked over, and cook till they are plump. Serve on hot buttered toast with pimolas on the side.

P.S. Pimolas are olives stuffed with pimentos.

The Royal Aquarium

In Florodora, the comic character Professor Tweedlepunch repeatedly introduces himself as being a Phrenologist "from the Royal Aquarium, London". Originally we had thought that this was a simple humorous non sequitur. Why in the world would a phrenologist be from an aquarium? So, we had originally thought it was like saying you were a snowplow driver from Tahiti.

BUT, it turns out that the Royal Aquarium was an actual place in Victorian London, designed as an aquarium in 1876, but never (almost) used as such. Originally having tanks and an elaborate system of pipes and many other multi-purpose rooms, almost immediately it ran into operating difficulties, but did once manage to display a dead whale.

By the 1890s, the Aquarium had acquired a risqué reputation, with unaccompanied ladies promenading through the hall in search of male companionship. It contained a legit theater which was mostly used as a music hall and for circus and other exotic entertainments. A natural place for a dubious sham phrenologist-cum-detective to claim to hail from, isn't it?

There are two other interesting Savoy Opera connections: The Royal Aquarium included a theater, the aptly named Aquarium Theatre. It had an unusually large Grand Organ whose installation and construction in 1877 was supervised by none other than Arthur Sullivan. In its opening year, one of the plays produced was an adaptation of Great Expectations by W. S. Gilbert.

Still in existence when Florodora was written in 1899, The Royal Aquarium was demolished in 1903, though the Aquarium Theatre stood until 1907. It is immortalized in Florodora. You can read all about it on Wikipedia.

Florodora Girl as The Ideal

The image and allure of the Florodora Girl replaced the Gibson Girl as the feminine ideal in the early years of the 20th century. Here is an illustration by Hamilton King of a Florodora Girl (1902) which was distributed by Turkish Trophies Cigarettes:

Hamilton King would soon draw the famous Coca-Cola Girl (left) advertising image, and in June 1920 King drew this gorgeous Theatre Magazine cover portrait of Marion Davies (right), who was later the producer and star of the 1930 movie The Florodora Girl (see below).

To this day, the Society of Illustrators annually awards their Hamilton King award for excellence.

And Happy New Year

Best wishes for a healthy and music-filled 2009, everybody.