George Edwardes
However, his cousins were Irish theatre managers John and Michael Gunn, and they obtained a job for him at Leicester's Royal Opera House.
Together, they produced Little Jack Sheppard a burlesque in a full-length format with an original score by Meyer Lutz, which opened at Christmas 1885.
After this, in 1886, Hollingshead retired, and from then on the Guv'nor (as Edwardes came to be known) was in charge, with the assistance of the theatre's star player, Nellie Farren.
[3] These included Monte Cristo, Junior (1887), Miss Esmeralda (1887), Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim (1887), Faust up to Date (1888), Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué (1889), Carmen up to Data (1890),[4] Cinder Ellen up too Late (1891), and Don Juan (1892, with music by Meyer Lutz, book by Fred Leslie and lyrics by Adrian Ross).
At the same time, the death of Fred Leslie and retirement of Nellie Farren by 1892 helped bring to an end the era of Gaiety burlesque.
He also became manager of the struggling Empire Theatre, London, and transformed it into a music hall before it became associated with several successful ballets under the composer-director Leopold Wenzel.
The earliest of these shows, taking a cue from Dorothy, had a musical style similar to the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas.
[10] Like Thomas German Reed and W. S. Gilbert before him, Edwardes wanted to produce musical plays that were more respectable (and would attract a more affluent, polite crowd) than risqué burlesque.
But Edwardes sought pieces that integrated spoken dialogue and music in a lighter, less satiric way than Gilbert and Sullivan had, using topical songs, fashionable costumes and sassy byplay between the characters.
[15] In Edwardes's shows, these ladies were, as The Sketch noted in its review of The Geisha in 1896, "clothed in accordance with the very latest and most extreme modes of the moment."
Alan Hyman wrote in The Gaiety Years, Edwardes joined with American producer Augustin Daly to build a new London theatre that they would share.
The stars at Daly's included strong, romantic singers: baritone Hayden Coffin and soprano Marie Tempest.
After a falling out with Coffin, Edwardes found success at Daly's with a series of English-language adaptations of European operettas, including Les p'tites Michu (1905), The Merry Widow (1907), The Dollar Princess (1910), The Count of Luxemburg (1911) and The Marriage Market (1913).
[5] Edwardes was a founder member of the Society of West End Theatre Managers, along with Frank Curzon, Helen Carte, Arthur Bourchier and sixteen others.
[19] Edwardes raced horses, and one of this thoroughbreds, Santoi, won many prizes including the Ascot Gold Cup in 1901.
His theatrical enterprises continued to operate under the guidance of Robert Evett, who managed to produce a number of hits over the next few years, notably The Maid of the Mountains and The Boy, both beginning in 1917, that paid the debts of the estate.
