William Furst
Encyclopedia
William Wallace Fuerst was an American composer of musical theatre
pieces and a music director, best remembered for supplying incidental music
to theatrical productions on Broadway
.
, Maude Adams
, Otis Skinner
, William Faversham
, Viola Allen
and Mrs. Leslie Carter
. He composed the music for five Shakespeare productions by Margaret Anglin
at the Berkeley Stadium in California, as well as her production of Electra
. One of his earliest operettas was My Geraldine (1880).
In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Furst was the orchestra director at the Tivoli Theatre in
San Francisco, California. He composed his only opera, Theodora, for the Tivoli. In 1892, he composed the successful operetta The Isle of Champagne. In 1893, he published "The Girl I Left Behind Me" and moved to New York City, becoming the music director at the now-demolished Empire Theater. The same year, he composed the music (along with Charles Alfred Byrne and Louis Harrison) for the musical Miss Nicotine with Lillian Russell
and Marie Dressler
Another such Empire piece was The Little Trooper, starring Della Fox
(1894) followed by The Little Minister (1897). In 1898, he composed another such piece for the Empire, A Normandy Wedding (an adaptation of the French Papa Gougon), which received an enthusiastic reception in New York at the Herald Square Theatre.
By 1900, Furst also had fairly steady work as a composer/arranger of incidental music
to accompany theatrical productions. He produced music for, or was music director for numerous plays, including a steady stream of dramas produced by David Belasco
and Charles Frohman
. Two plays by Belasco which had Furst's musical accompaniments, Madame Butterfly and The Girl of the Golden West
, were made into operas by Giacomo Puccini
who attended their New York productions. Musicologist Allan W. Atlas has shown that Puccini modeled some music heard in his opera La fanciulla del West
on Furst's music. His last theatrical composition was music for Joan the Woman
, starring Geraldine Farrar
.
Long Island, New York at the age of 66. An enthusiastic gardener, Furst tripped in his garden, injuring his foot, which led to a brain clot. He was survived by his widow Charlotte and his daughter, Mrs. Lillian Martin.
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
pieces and a music director, best remembered for supplying incidental music
Incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
to theatrical productions on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
.
Career
Furst began composing theatrical music by the 1880s for productions starring Herbert Beerbohm TreeHerbert Beerbohm Tree
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
, Maude Adams
Maude Adams
Maude Ewing Kiskadden , known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American stage actress who achieved her greatest success as Peter Pan. Adams's personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more...
, Otis Skinner
Otis Skinner
Otis Skinner was an American actor.He was the son of a Universalist minister; his brother, Charles Montgomery Skinner, was a noted journalist and critic in New York. Skinner was educated in Hartford, Connecticut, with an eye towards a career in commerce. A visit to the theater left him stage-struck...
, William Faversham
William Faversham
William Faversham was a legendary movie and stage actor from England who made his name on Broadway when he starred as Algernon in the original production of The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895...
, Viola Allen
Viola Allen
Viola Emily Allen was an American stage actress who played leading roles in Shakespere and other plays, including many original plays. She starred in over two dozen Broadway productions from 1885 to 1916...
and Mrs. Leslie Carter
Mrs. Leslie Carter
Caroline Louise Dudley was an American silent film and stage actress who used her married name, Mrs. Leslie Carter, as her stage name to spite her former husband. She was called "The American Sarah Bernhardt"....
. He composed the music for five Shakespeare productions by Margaret Anglin
Margaret Anglin
Mary Margaret Anglin was a Canadian-born Broadway actress, director and producer whom Encyclopædia Britannica calls "one of the most brilliant actresses of her day."...
at the Berkeley Stadium in California, as well as her production of Electra
Electra
In Greek mythology, Electra was an Argive princess and daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra. She and her brother Orestes plotted revenge against their mother Clytemnestra and stepfather Aegisthus for the murder of their father Agamemnon...
. One of his earliest operettas was My Geraldine (1880).
In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Furst was the orchestra director at the Tivoli Theatre in
San Francisco, California. He composed his only opera, Theodora, for the Tivoli. In 1892, he composed the successful operetta The Isle of Champagne. In 1893, he published "The Girl I Left Behind Me" and moved to New York City, becoming the music director at the now-demolished Empire Theater. The same year, he composed the music (along with Charles Alfred Byrne and Louis Harrison) for the musical Miss Nicotine with Lillian Russell
Lillian Russell
Lillian Russell was an American actress and singer. She became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th century and early 20th century, known for her beauty and style, as well as for her voice and stage presence.Russell was born in Iowa but raised in Chicago...
and Marie Dressler
Marie Dressler
Marie Dressler was a Canadian-American actress and Depression-era film star. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1930-31 in Min and Bill.-Early life and stage career:...
Another such Empire piece was The Little Trooper, starring Della Fox
Della Fox
Della May Fox was an American singing comedienne, whose popularity peaked in the 1890s when the diminutive Fox appeared opposite the very tall De Wolf Hopper in several musicals. She also toured successfully with her own company.-Biography:Fox was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of...
(1894) followed by The Little Minister (1897). In 1898, he composed another such piece for the Empire, A Normandy Wedding (an adaptation of the French Papa Gougon), which received an enthusiastic reception in New York at the Herald Square Theatre.
By 1900, Furst also had fairly steady work as a composer/arranger of incidental music
Incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
to accompany theatrical productions. He produced music for, or was music director for numerous plays, including a steady stream of dramas produced by David Belasco
David Belasco
David Belasco was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director and playwright.-Biography:Born in San Francisco, California, where his Sephardic Jewish parents had moved from London, England, during the Gold Rush, he began working in a San Francisco theatre doing a variety of routine jobs,...
and Charles Frohman
Charles Frohman
Charles Frohman was an American theatrical producer. Frohman was producing plays by 1889 and acquired his first Broadway theatre by 1892. He discovered and promoted many stars of the American theatre....
. Two plays by Belasco which had Furst's musical accompaniments, Madame Butterfly and The Girl of the Golden West
The Girl of the Golden West (play)
The Girl of the Golden West is a theatrical play written, produced and directed by David Belasco and later made into an opera, La fanciulla del West, by Puccini. The four-act melodrama set in the California Gold Rush opened at the Belasco Theatre in New York on November 14, 1905 and ran for 224...
, were made into operas by Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
who attended their New York productions. Musicologist Allan W. Atlas has shown that Puccini modeled some music heard in his opera La fanciulla del West
La fanciulla del West
La fanciulla del West is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by the American author David Belasco. Its highly-publicised premiere occurred in New York City in 1910...
on Furst's music. His last theatrical composition was music for Joan the Woman
Joan the Woman
Joan the Woman is a 1916 silent drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Geraldine Farrar as Joan of Arc.It was the first film to use the Handschiegl Color Process for certain scenes...
, starring Geraldine Farrar
Geraldine Farrar
Geraldine Farrar was an American soprano opera singer and film actress, noted for her beauty, acting ability, and "the intimate timbre of her voice." She had a large following among young women, who were nicknamed "Gerry-flappers".- Early life and opera career :Farrar was born in Melrose,...
.
Death
Furst died in 1917 at his home in FreeportFreeport, New York
Freeport is a village in the town of Hempstead, Nassau County, New York, USA, on the South Shore of Long Island. The population was 42,860 at the 2010 census. A settlement since the 1640s, it was once an oystering community and later a resort popular with the New York City theater community...
Long Island, New York at the age of 66. An enthusiastic gardener, Furst tripped in his garden, injuring his foot, which led to a brain clot. He was survived by his widow Charlotte and his daughter, Mrs. Lillian Martin.
Musicals and Operettas
This list may not be complete.- 1880 My Geraldine
- 1892 The Isle of Champagne
- 1893 Princess Nicotine
- 1894 The Little Trooper
- 1895 Fleur-De-Lis
- 1897 The Little Minister
- 1898 A Normandy Wedding
- 1909 The White Sister
Plays with music by Furst
This list may not be complete.- 1888 She
- 1891 Miss Helyett
- 1895 The Heart of MarylandThe Heart of Maryland (play)The Heart of Maryland was a theatrical play written, produced and directed by David Belasco. The four-act melodrama set in the American Civil War opened at the Herald Square Theatre in New York on October 22, 1895 and ran for 240 performances. Mrs. Leslie Carter originated the role of Maryland...
- 1898 Christian
- 1899 Sherlock Holmes
- 1900 A Royal Family
- 1900 Adventures of François
- 1900 Richard Carvel
- 1900 Lost River
- 1900 Madame Butterfly
- 1901 Brother Officers
- 1901 Colorado
- 1901 Du Barry
- 1902 Iris
- 1902 The Darling of the Gods
- 1904 The Music MasterThe Music MasterThe Music Master was a theatrical play written by Charles Klein, and produced and directed by David Belasco. The three-act comedy-drama opened at the Belasco Theatre in New York on September 26, 1904. It ran for 288 performances before it was moved to the Bijou Theatre and ran for another 306...
- 1905 Adrea
- 1905 The Girl of the Golden WestThe Girl of the Golden West (play)The Girl of the Golden West is a theatrical play written, produced and directed by David Belasco and later made into an opera, La fanciulla del West, by Puccini. The four-act melodrama set in the California Gold Rush opened at the Belasco Theatre in New York on November 14, 1905 and ran for 224...
- 1906 Pippa Passes
- 1906 The Rose of the Rancho
- 1907 The Christian Pilgrim
- 1908 The World and His Wife
- 1908 The Winterfeast
- 1911 The Return of Peter Grimm
- 1913 Evangeline
Furst as conductor
Furst served as conductor/music director of many of the works that he composed. In addition, he is known to have conducted the following musicals and operettas:- 1883 Green-Room Fun!
- 1893 An Artist's ModelAn Artist's ModelAn Artist's Model is a two-act musical by Owen Hall, with lyrics by Harry Greenbank and music by Sidney Jones, with additional songs by Joseph and Mary Watson, Paul Lincke, Frederick Ross, Henry Hamilton and Leopold Wenzel. It opened at Daly's Theatre in London, produced by George Edwardes and...
- 1900 The Rose of PersiaThe Rose of PersiaThe Rose of Persia; or, The Story-Teller and the Slave, is a two-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Basil Hood. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 29 November 1899, closing on 28 June 1900 after a profitable run of 211 performances...
