ABSTRACT

Whatever its faults may be, the American musical theatre has never remained static for long. The peak popularity of each new fashion has inevitably been short and the turnover of modes and ideas rapid. Weber and Fields’ Music Hall, which seemed as permanent as the Rock of Gibraltar in the late 1890s, disappeared as an institution in 1904, only nine years after it was established; by 1912, when the partners staged their “jubilee revival” their art was already a matter for nostalgia and sadness over the passing of the good old days. The Gaiety Girls, the models of feminine vivacity and attractiveness in 1894, were pushed into a back seat by our own native-born Florodora Girls in 1900. George M. Cohan’s swift and brash musical farces of the New York scene were top attractions for less than a decade; the freshness of Cohan’s inspiration had deserted him by 1911, when The Little Millionaire elicited the comment “If Cohan’s reputation rested on this piece, he would never have come to own his own theatre on Broadway.” The inordinate popularity of The Merry Widow was quite as much a threat as an encouragement to subsequent waltz operas, and Lehár’s own Gypsy Love, in 1912, was coolly received.