Basil Hood
Basil Willett Charles Hood (5 April 1864 – 7 August 1917) was a British dramatist and lyricist, perhaps best known for writing the libretti of half a dozen Savoy Operas and for his English adaptations of operettas, including The Merry Widow.
After some modest success, Hood and his collaborator, the composer Walter Slaughter, had a major hit with their long-running show, Gentleman Joe, in 1895.
With Arthur Sullivan and then Edward German, he wrote several well-received pieces for the Savoy Theatre, including The Rose of Persia (1899), The Emerald Isle (1901), Merrie England (1902) and A Princess of Kensington (1903).
After comic opera went out of fashion, Hood turned to Edwardian musical comedy, writing lyrics for The Belle of Mayfair (1906) and The Girls of Gottenberg (1907), among others.
He then found his greatest success with adaptations of continental operettas for the impresario George Edwardes, writing English versions of such works as (1907), The Dollar Princess (1908), A Waltz Dream (1908) and The Count of Luxembourg (1911), among others, sometimes drastically rewriting the book and lyrics.
[9] In 1895, Hood and Slaughter wrote a full-length musical comedy, Gentleman Joe, the Hansom Cabbie, a vehicle for the comedian Arthur Roberts.
[4] The next Slaughter and Hood success, The French Maid, won good reviews on its pre-London production[13] and from the London critics when it opened at Terry's Theatre in April 1897.
[14] During the run, Hood wrote a short curtain raiser, Apron Strings, a farcical comedy about marital misunderstandings, which was added to the bill in October.
[18] Also beginning in 1897, Hood and Slaughter wrote a series of short musicals for children, based on fairy tales, which received warm reviews, including Little Hans Andersen.
The first was Pretty Polly, which ran with The Rose of Persia in 1900 and with Patience in 1900–01,[25] and the second was Ib and Little Christina (1900), which played in several theatres including the Savoy (in 1901, as a companion piece to Hood's The Willow Pattern).
Basil Hood and Mr. Edward German have, by means of the latest Savoy success, increased their reputations to an extent that will lead the musical public to look to them in future for work as epoch-making in its peculiar genre as that of Gilbert and Sullivan.
[4] When Merrie England finished its second London run, German and Hood immediately followed it with A Princess of Kensington (1903) which ran for 115 performances and then went on tour.
[4][6] With the resurgence of interest in Continental European operettas, Edwardes engaged Hood to prepare the English versions of what became a series of extremely successful productions.
The Times, in its obituary notice, wrote, "He spent more ability in adapting librettos for the late George Edwardes than the quality of the work demanded … under these conditions he scarcely fulfilled his promise as a wit and poet.
After that, Hood supplied lyrics for individual numbers for some musicals, and a revue, Bric-a-Brac with Lionel Monckton and Arthur Wimperis, and some non-musical plays.
