[3] A production in Sydney, Australia, in May 1905 by J C Williamson's Royal Comic Opera Company, opened on 6 May, starring Margaret Thomas as Nanoya.

[4] A tea plantation in Ceylon has been purchased by a young Englishman, Harry Vereker, who falls in love with Nanoya, one of his Cingalese workers, and proposes marriage.

Seventeen year old Nanoya is a Cingalese girl who had been betrothed at the age of four to the potentate of Boobhamba as one of his many wives, each dressed in a different colour to prevent mistakes and consequent jealousy.

To avoid this fate, she had absconded and gone to work on a tea plantation belonging to Harry Vereker (but which has been fraudulently leased to him by a rascally lawyer, Chambuddy Ram).

[6] The St James's Gazette noted that the first performance was "received with rapture on Saturday night by an enthusiastic audience and played with the most admirable vivacity and smoothness by a brilliant company".

[7] In Lionel Monckton's music, The Daily Telegraph saw "a distinct leaning towards the traditions of genuine comic opera, and in this connection it is pleasant to find that what may be called the Savoy manner has served its composer as a bright answer".

[5] Several critics commented that the second act was dramatically, if not visually, less effective than the first, although they offered different reasons, and a few papers regarded the piece ripe for pruning.

[11] Captain Frederick John Fraser of the Indian Army sued George Edwardes, as producer of The Cingalee, in 1905 in King's Bench before Mr Justice Darling.

[13] A 1930 memoir by one of Fraser's legal team assessed that the prosecution had erred by attacking the character of an obviously honourable man and that the previously closely balanced case had been won by a legal ambush on one of the witnesses (his identity hidden in later accounts, but confirmed in contemporary newspaper accounts as the theatrical costume designer, Percy Anderson).

The plaintiff's counsel produced the forgotten letter in Anderson's handwriting and made the unfortunate witness read it to the court "causing some sensation".

[13] The jury, swayed by this evidence, were viewed as too generous in the damages awarded, and the defence appealed, primarily on that basis, with £2,000 being paid into court.

[15] The first modern recording of a group of numbers from The Cingalee, was made in 2003 by Theatre Bel-Etage chorus and orchestra, conductor Mart Sander.