Debris of the musical stage ....

 Debris

The world's poubelles are submerged by it ...

All those unproduced show scores. All those which were played for just one night or tryout before being canned ...

Then post-Jesus Christ Superstar, we got the 'concept recordings'. So much ruined vinyl. It was an awful period in which to be a producer's reader/listener!  I was asked by a London producer to 'do something' with one of these. I forget what its subject was: I think Italian and deeply serious. I returned its harmless score and dreadful text saying I'd have to start rewriting from zero ... at which the (American? University?) writer/composer threw a majorhissifit ... and I turned my newly-discovered doctoring skills to better stuff.

It's teddibly teddily fashionable, nowadays, in some esoteric quarters to exhume bits of musicals or operas that never happened, or failed and claim them a jewelled masterpieces. If, that is, the performance materials survive. Most don't. Unless they have a well-known or culty name attached to them. And publication doesn't always help. The marvellous musical Expresso Bongo had its score and libretto published. It was recorded. Made into a movie with the young Cliff Richard ... and when you try to get it back together for a new production? Impossible.

I am moved to this opening of my bleeding heart by the discovery, today, of a piece of printed music.

Well, they tried. At least this piece got on. Teatro Bellini, Naples, 1892 apparently. But Italian houses had long been accustomed to chewing up and spitting out new operas and this one, unless I mistake, got spat.

But, as we can see, it got spat as far as Britain, where the young baritone-producer 'Arthur Rousb(e)y' actually got it to the stage. Rousbey was leading a not very high-class opera company around the British provinces. Occasionally he tried something outside the tried and true repertoire, and for reasons unexplained (to me), he decided on Mercedes.  It was produced at the Leinster Hall in Dublin, with Rousbey, Miss van Dalle (Mrs Hilton St Just eig Todd), Boyd, Frank Land and Theresa Gilbert in the lead roles on 11 January 1896.

They were soon back to playing Faust, Maritana, The Bohemian Girl et al. Rousbey got married, the company headed to South Africa, and he died on the way home. Mercedes was already dead. A bit more musical-theatre flotsam and jetsam.

But this music sheet survives to witness that it ever existed. Just like all those 'concept recordings' and 'new musical' CDs of the 20th century ...

PS for a full biography of Rousbey (eig James Huntress of Westoe) see my Victorian Vocalists. 

And here's another. England this time, The Young Pretender was produced at the Haymarket 10 November 1846. It got varying responses:

Why the difference?  I think, perhaps, because of the folk involved. James Hudson, Priscilla Horton and J B Buckstone were from the top drawer of the Haymarket's megastars. Why did they want to play a piece of a such evidently not 'new and original'. There is an answer.

The piece was written by well known journalist Mark Lemon, husband to a sister of Emma Romer, and the music composed by Mrs Gilbert a'Beckett, sister to ... Priscilla Horton. Which is, I imagine, why this song was published:

The trade press opined that it would stay of the bills for a bit thanks to the performers, and he was right.

It got through to mid-December ... and the songs were well plugged by The Music Book ...

Much Mrs a'Beckett, a bit of Romer, more Lemon, one T G Reed (Priscilla's husband) ... I wonder who ran The Music Book. Ah, a new venture launched on 1 October 1846. Published St Bride's Avenue, Fleet Street by 'The Music Book' (prospectuses available). The first issue promised a Balfe song for 6d ('Sing Maiden Sing'), and a Wallace setting of Tom Hood ('The False Friend'). But the 'proprietors' still didn't come out of the closet ..

The publication had a very short life. And the proprietors' names still didn't appear. Even in the bankruptcy court.

Mark Lemon