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Sweethearts (theater)
Encyclopedia
- For information about the W. S. GilbertW. S. GilbertSir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
play of the same name, see Sweethearts (play)Sweethearts (play)Sweethearts is a comic play billed as a "dramatic contrast" in two acts by W. S. Gilbert. The play tells a sentimental and ironic story of the differing recollections of a man and a woman about their last meeting together before being separated and reunited after 30 years.It was first produced on...
Sweethearts is an operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
or musical play in two acts with music by Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...
, lyrics by Robert B. Smith
Robert Bache Smith
Robert Bache Smith , usually published as Robert B. Smith, was an American librettist and lyricist. His older brother, Harry B. Smith, was also a successful lyricist and a writer and composer....
and book by Harry B. Smith
Harry B. Smith
Harry Bache Smith was a writer, lyricist and composer. The most prolific of all American stage writers, he is said to have written over 300 librettos and more than 6000 lyrics. Some of his best-known works were librettos for the composer Victor Herbert...
and Fred De Gressac.
Productions
The first performance of the work was at the Academy of Music in BaltimoreBaltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
in March 1913, after which the show was overhauled and shortened before spending five weeks in Philadelphia and another five in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
tryouts.
The original Broadway production opened at the New Amsterdam Theater on September 8, 1913 and transferred to the Liberty Theatre
Liberty Theatre
The Liberty Theatre was a Broadway theater from 1904 to 1933, located at 236 West 42nd Street in New York City.In 1996 it was used for a staged reading of T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, with actress Fiona Shaw, directed by Deborah Warner. The New York Times review described the theater as...
on November 10, 1913 running for a total of 136 performances. The original cast included Christie MacDonald
Christie MacDonald
Christie MacDonald was a Canadian-American actress and opera singer. She was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia...
as Princess Jeanne/Sylvia, Thomas Conkey as Prince Franz, Edwin Wilson as Lieutenant Karl, Frank Belcher as Petrus Von Trump, Tom McNaughton as Mikel Mikeloviz, Ethel Du Fre Houston as Dame Paula, and Hazel Kirk as Liane.
There was a brief revival at Jolson's 59th Street Theatre, opening on September 21, 1929 and closing on October 5, 1929. Gladys Baxter played Sylvia.
MGM made the musical into a film in 1938
Sweethearts (film)
Sweethearts is a 1938 musical romance directed by W.S. Van Dyke, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. The screenplay, by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, uses the “play within a play” device: a contemporary Broadway production of the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta is the setting for...
with a considerably altered screenplay, directed by W. S. Van Dyke
W. S. Van Dyke
Woodbridge Strong "Woody" Van Dyke, Jr. was an American motion picture director.-Early life and career:...
and starring Jeanette MacDonald
Jeanette MacDonald
Jeanette MacDonald was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy...
and Nelson Eddy
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred...
. This was the first All-TECHNICOLOR film of MGM Studio.
A Broadway revival opened at the Shubert Theater on January 21, 1947 and ran for 288 performances. It featured a revised book by John Cecil Holm
John Cecil Holm
John Cecil Holm was an American dramatist, theatre director and actor.He is best known for his 1935 play Three Men on a Horse, co-written with George Abbott....
and musical direction by Robert Russell Bennett
Robert Russell Bennett
Robert Russell Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers. In 1957 and 2008, Bennett received Tony Awards...
. The cast included Bobby Clark
Bobby Clark (comedian)
Robert Edwin Clark , known as Bobby Clark, was a minstrel, vaudevillian, performer on stage, film, television and the circus....
as Mikel, Marjorie Gateson
Marjorie Gateson
Marjorie Augusta Gateson , was a character actress in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s....
as Dame Lucy, Gloria Story as Princess Sylvia and June Knight
June Knight
June Knight was an American Broadway and film actress.Aged 19, she appeared in the last Ziegfeld Follies show, Hot-Cha!...
as Liane.
The piece was presented in the 1980s by the Light Opera of Manhattan
Light Opera of Manhattan
Light Opera of Manhattan, known as LOOM, was an Off-Broadway repertory theatre company that produced light operas, including the works of Gilbert and Sullivan and European and American operettas, 52 weeks per year, in New York City between 1968 and 1989....
.
In 2002 the Ohio Light Opera
Ohio Light Opera
The Ohio Light Opera is a professional opera company based in Wooster, Ohio that performs the light opera repertory, including Gilbert and Sullivan, American, British and continental operettas, and other musical theatre works, especially of the late 19th and early 20th centuries...
commissioned a new critical edition of the opera from Quade Winter
Quade Winter
Quade Winter is an American composer, musical restorer and translator, specializing in the light operas of Victor Herbert. Earlier in his career, he sang opera for over two decades.-Early years and singing career:...
, based on the composer's original manuscripts in the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. A complete recording was issued by Albany Records
Albany Records
Albany Records is an American classical music record label focusing particularly on contemporary classical music. It was established by Peter Kermani in 1987, and is based in Albany, New York.-External links:**...
.
Synopsis
Mikel Mikeloviz, disguised as a monk, transports Princess Jeanne, the infant daughter of King René of the little kingdom of Zilinia, to BrugesBruges
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....
to wait in safety during the war. Dame Paula runs the Laundry of the White Geese and is known as Mother Goose. Mikel gives the princess to Paula in secret to raise as her own daughter under the name of Sylvia. Paula later has six daughters of her own who help her run the laundry. Their father has been at war for ten years.
22 years later, the people are demanding the restoration of a monarchy. Mikel is conspiring to restore Princess Jeanne to the throne, which is about to be offered to Prince Franz, the heir presumptive. Franz, while travelling in disguise, has fallen in love with Sylvia. But Sylvia, who does not know that she is really a princess, is bethrothed to Lieutenant Karl, a military lothario. A sleazy politician, disguised as Paula's battle-scarred husband, tries to ensnare one of the two apparently adopted daughters as the bride for Prince Franz, but he does not know whether the real adopted daughter is the scheming Liane or the sweet Sylvia. Mikel's plans are hindered by the schemes of three villains. Mikel also mistakes Liane, a milliner who has sought temporary employment in the Laundry of the White Geese, for the lost princess. After all the complications are combed out, Franz and Sylvia marry, vowing to rule together.
Recording
RCA Victor issued an album using studio singers and Al GoodmanAl Goodman
Al Goodman was a conductor, songwriter, stage composer, musical director, arranger, and pianist....
's orchestra on 78-RPM records. These highlights were issued on Lp by RCA Victor in 1951 and on their budget label RCA Camden
RCA Camden
RCA Camden was a budget record label of recordings, first introduced by RCA Victor.-History:The label was named after Camden, New Jersey, original home to the Victor Talking Machine Company, later RCA Records. It specialized in reissuing historic classical and popular recordings from the RCA catalog...
in 1958. A 2008 CD release combines these recordings with selections from Naughty Marietta
Naughty Marietta
Naughty Marietta is a 1935 film based on the operetta of the same name by Victor Herbert: Jeanette MacDonald stars as a vivacious Princess who trades places with her maid Marietta in order to avoid an arranged marriage...
and The Red Mill
The Red Mill
The Red Mill is an operetta written by Victor Herbert, with a libretto by Henry Blossom. It premiered on Broadway on September 24, 1906 at the Knickerbocker Theatre and ran for 274 performances, starring comedians Fred Stone and David Montgomery. It was revived on October 16, 1945, opening at the...
.
Songs
Act 1- Iron, Iron, Iron - Chorus
- On Parade - Ensemble
- Smiles - Liane and Ensemble
- Sweethearts (If You Ask Where Love Is Found) - Sylvia
- For Every Lover Must Meet His Fate - Prince Franz and Ensemble
- Mother Goose - Sylvia and Ensemble
- The Angelus - Sylvia and Prince Franz
- Jeanette and Her Little Wooden Shoes (Sabot Dance) (Clip Clop Clop) - Liane, Hon. Percy *Algernon Slingsby, Aristide Caniche and Baron Petrus Von Tromp
Act 2
- Waiting for the Bride - Male Chorus
- Pretty As a Picture - Von Tromp and Male Chorus
- In the Convent They Never Taught Me That - Sylvia and Ensemble
- Game Of Love - Lt. Karl and Daughters
- I Don't Know How I Do It But I Do (Lyrics By Harry B. Smith) - Slingsby
- Cricket on the Hearth - Sylvia and Prince Franz
- The Monks' Quartette - Mikel Mikeloviz, Von Tromp, Slingsby and Aristide Caniche
Roles
- Dame Paula (Mezzo-sopranoMezzo-sopranoA mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
) - Owner of the White Goose Laundry - Karl (TenorTenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
) - A Lieutenant in the local military - Liane (SopranoSopranoA soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
) - A hatshop girl mascarading as one of Paula's daughters - Mikel (Tenor) - A diplomat from Zenovia
- Sylvia (Coloratura Soprano) - An adopted daughter of Dame Paula
- Franz (BaritoneBaritoneBaritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
) - Prince of Zenovia - Van Tromp (Baritone) - A diplomat from Germany
- Slingsby (Baritone) - A diplomat from France
- Chorus
External links
- Sweethearts at the IBDB
- Libretto
- http://www.albanyrecords.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=AR&Product_Code=TROY546-47Information about the Ohio Light OperaOhio Light OperaThe Ohio Light Opera is a professional opera company based in Wooster, Ohio that performs the light opera repertory, including Gilbert and Sullivan, American, British and continental operettas, and other musical theatre works, especially of the late 19th and early 20th centuries...
recording] - NY Times review of 1983 concert production