ABSTRACT
The third opening on February 1st was, of course, at Niblo’s. This time the piece selected for the Thompson troupe was not one of Lydia’s tried-and-true repertoire but a “new burlesque written for the occasion” by the same young Scotsman who had remade Orpheus for the Lingards. Henry Brougham Farnie had been a schoolmaster in his native country before breaking out into journalism and heading down to London where he found employment in the music business. Soon, after pouring out a plethora of song lyrics (notably that to Arditi’s “The Stirrup Cup”) with some success, he saw the production of his first works for the stage, operettas whose music came from the pens of no lesser composers than Michael Balfe, Sir Julius Benedict, and W. C. Levey.
