Robin Hood is a comic opera with music by Reginald De Koven and a libretto by Harry B.
[1] It was performed by the Boston Ideal Opera Company, also known as the Bostonians, with the original cast consisting of Edwin Hoff as Robin Hood, Henry Clay Barnabee as The Sheriff of Nottingham, Marie Stone as Lady Marian, Peter Lang as Sir Guy of Gisborne, W. H. MacDonald as Little John, George Frothingham as Friar Tuck, Jessie Bartlett Davis as both Allan-A-Dale and Dame Durden, Eugene Cowles as Will Scarlet, and Carlotta Maconda as Annabel.
[3] The Broadway cast was the same as in Chicago, except that Tom Karl played Robin, and Caroline Hamilton was Marian.
[1] Davis was unhappy with her role and demanded that De Koven provide her with a new song during the Broadway run.
De Koven gave her a song he had written several years earlier, "Oh Promise Me" (with lyrics by Clement Scott), which had already been interpolated into the London production.
[4] Prior to the Broadway opening, the opera was staged in London for the first time at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1891 under the title Maid Marian, starring Hayden Coffin as Robin.
Robin Hood and his archers arrive and tout their ideal life in the woods ("Come the Bowmen in Lincoln Green"); they are welcomed to an archery contest.
Maid Marian enters in disguise as a page boy to see Sir Guy of Gisborne, the ward of the Sheriff of Nottingham ("I Came as a Cavalier").
In Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood and his friends have gathered ("O Cheerily Sounds the Hunter's Horn", "Brown October Ale" and "Oh, Promise Me").
Marian offers to take Annabel's place that evening, and Robin sings a serenade, "A Troubadour Sang to His Love".
In the courtyard of the castle, Robin and his men find King Richard, who has arrived home from the Crusades.