Faust up to date

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Sheet music
Faust up to Date

Music	Meyer Lutz
Lyrics	G. R. Sims Henry Pettitt
Book	G. R. Sims Henry Pettitt
Productions	1888 West End

Faust up to Date is a musical burlesque with a score written by Meyer Lutz. The libretto was written by G. R. Sims and Henry Pettitt. The piece was first performed at the Gaiety Theatre, London on 30 October 1888, produced by George Edwardes and ran until August 1889. It starred Florence St. John as Margaret, E. J. Lonnen as Mephistopheles, Fanny Robina as Faust, George Stone as Valentine, and Mabel Love as Totchen.^[1] A highlight of the piece was a dance for four women.^[2] It was revived in July 1892, with Florence St. John again playing the role of Margaret, Edmund Payne as Mephistopheles and Arthur Williams as Valentine. The piece enjoyed subsequent productions in New York,^[3] Australia (with Robert Courtneidge as Valentine)^[4] and elsewhere.

Faust up to Date was a spoof of Gounod's opera Faust, which had first been performed in London in 1864, and followed on from an earlier Lutz musical Mephistopheles, or Faust and Marguerite. This type of burlesque, or travesty was popular in Britain at the time. Other examples include The Bohemian G-yurl and the Unapproachable Pole (1877), Don Juan, Blue Beard, Ariel (1883, by F. C. Burnand), Little Jack Sheppard (1885), Cinder Ellen up too Late, Pretty Esmeralda (1887), Mazeppa, Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué and Carmen up to Data (1890).^[5] Faust up to Date was set in London, with Margaret as a virtuous barmaid.^[2]

John Hollingshead had managed the Gaiety Theatre from 1868 to 1886 as a venue for variety, continental operetta, light comedy, and numerous musical burlesques, such as Faust up to date, composed or arranged by the theatre's music director, Wilhelm Meyer Lutz. Hollingshead called himself a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses."^[6] George Edwardes joined Hollingshead as producers of Gaity Burlesques beginning in 1885, and Hollingshead left the theatre in 1886. Soon, however, Edwardes changed the focus of the theatre from musical burlesque to the new genre of Edwardian musical comedy.