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.