An Artist's Model

An Artist's Model

Poster, 1895
Music Sidney Jones
Lyrics Harry Greenbank
Book Owen Hall
Productions 1895 West End

An 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 directed by James T. Tanner, on 2 February 1895, transferring to the Lyric Theatre on 28 May 1895, and ran for a total of 392 performances. The piece starred Marie Tempest (and later Florence Perry) in the title role, Hayden Coffin, Letty Lind, Leonora Braham, Eric Lewis, Maurice Farkoa, Marie Studholme, and Louie Pounds.[1] It also had a Broadway run at the former Broadway Theatre from December 21, 1895 through February 8, 1896.[2]

The success of A Gaiety Girl in 1893, the first musical by the team of Hall, Greenbank and Jones (followed by another such success, The Shop Girl in 1894), had confirmed to Edwardes that he was on the right track. He immediately set the team to work on An Artist's Model. Edwardes wanted his Daly's Theatre musicals to be slightly more sophisticated than his light and simple Gaiety Theatre musicals. Hall's new book kept the snappy dialogue of the previous work, but paired it with a romantic plot, tacked on at the last minute when Edwardes managed to engage the popular Marie Tempest, and a role was quickly written in for her. This lucky chance set up the formula for a series of successes for the Edwardes-Hall-Jones-Greenbank team at Daly's Theatre.[3]

The story is set in France. The eponymous model, having married a millionaire and been left a widow, returns to the studio in order to recover the affections of a lovelorn artist. He repulses her advances and she becomes engaged to an English nobleman, but then the artist woos her. The Times opening night review thought the story was weak (it was likely edited after that) but praised the lyrics and music.[4]

An Artist's Model was succeeded by The Geisha, which was to be the biggest international hit the British musical theatre had known, playing for 760 performances in its original London run and thousands of performances on the Continent (one source counts some 8,000 in Germany alone) and in America and then touring for decades in Britain. Still more hits followed.

Musical numbers

Act I - An Artist's Studio in Paris.
Act II - Ball-room in a Country House.
Supplementary Numbers.

Roles and original cast

References

  1. ↑ Compton-Rickett, Arthur and Ernest Henry Short, Ring Up the Curtain: Being a Pageant of English Entertainment Covering Half a Century (1970; first published 1938) Ayer Publishing ISBN 0-8369-5299-5
  2. ↑ (8 February 1896). Advertisement for final Broadway shows, The Sun (New York)
  3. ↑ Kurt Gänzl, The Encyclopedia of The Musical Theatre, Blackwell, Oxford (1994) vol. I, pp. 435-36
  4. ↑ "Daly's Theatre", The Times, 4 February 1895, p. 8

External links

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