Leslie Stuart: Composer of Florodora
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Leslie Stuart: Composer of Florodora
by Andrew Lamb
Published by Routledge in 2002; pp295, £35, ISBN 0 415 93747 7
My Bohemian Life by Leslie Stuart
Edited and annotated by
Andrew Lamb
Fullers Wood Press 2003; pp135
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Almost a decade ago a series of radio broadcasts entitled The Land Where the Good Songs Go opened with an episode which explored the early work of Jerome Kern. Presenter Mark Steyn discussed the composer's early work and expressed amazement that Kern could possibly have found anything to interest or inspire him in the works of the Edwardian musical theatre: "To the end of his life Kern professed himself to be a great fan of the old London Gaiety musicals and of Leslie Stuart, the Florodora man. It's difficult to imagine [Kern] sitting enraptured by Tell me Pretty Maiden, are there any more at home like you." What was evidently intended to be no more than a passing comment indicates a common view that the Edwardian musical theatre, which was so internationally successful in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, was a lesser class of work, inferior to the comic operas which had dominated the musical theatre of the 1880s, and yet outdated when considered alongside the works of Kern and the new generation of composers who flourished after the First World War. Many enthusiasts of the musical have frames of reference which only begin with the likes of the Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern shows, and pay little attention to anything which came before that, considering such works as belonging to a category which the broadcast mentioned earlier refers to as "mouldy operetta[s]". No doubt part of the problem is that the majority of these post-G&S, pre-First World War shows are not readily accessible, either as recordings or as performing materials, so analysis and evaluation of these works is not an easy task. For many enthusiasts of the musical theatre it becomes far easier to simply pretend that they are not worthy of attention.
If Kurt Gänzl's British Musical Theatre painted a broad landscape of the history of the Victorian and Edwardian musical theatre, then a new series of books published by Routledge under the overall series title of Forgotten Stars of the Musical Theatre provides a number of portraits to some of the finest creators and performers in the musical theatre of the time. The series consists of six volumes: series editor Kurt Gänzl has contributed volumes on Lydia Thompson and William B Gill, John Franceschina has authored biogrphies of David Braham and Harry B Smith and a biography of Alice May has been written by Adrienne Simpson. Of most significance to readers of this publication will be the first biography of Leslie Stuart by Andrew Lamb. To enthusiasts of the Edwardian musical theatre, it is surely no exaggeration to say that Andrew Lamb's biography of Leslie Stuart is probably the most significant step towards reviving interest in that era's works than anything since the publication of Ganzl's two volume history in 1986. Leslie Stuart: Composer of Florodora, (not Leslie Stuart: The Man Who Composed Florodora as the dust jacket mistakenly ascertains, but which the title page corrects) is everything that one could possibly hope for in a biography of one of the most significant composers of the whole Edwardesian era.
The working sphere that Leslie Stuart was involved in was wide and extensive, from the musical theatre to the music hall, concert arranging and popular songwriting, and the biography examines all aspects of his career. As Andrew Lamb so clearly documents, Stuart was a remarkable figure whose output probably extended into more areas than any of his contemporaries in the Edwardian musical theatre, and much of his work remains familiar today. Not only did Stuart compose Florodora, one of the most famous and successful musical comedies of the day, he was also creator of such music hall favourites as Lily of Laguna and Little Dolly Daydream, and composer of such popular songs as The Soldiers of the Queen. During his early years in Manchester, as T A Barrett, he organised concerts as early as 1881 at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Programs reproduced in the book indicate that the concert repertoire was predominantly selections from comic operas by such composers as Sullivan and Cellier, alongside excerpts from English Grand operas by Balfe and Wallace. By 1889-1890 these concerts had moved to St James Hall, the largest of Manchester's concert venues, and although they were billed as "Grand Opera Concerts", the content was still primarily comic operas, predominantly Gilbert and Sullivan. It is noticeable how vigorously Stuart kept the repertoire up to date; in the mid-1880s Stuart had included excerpts from The Mikado eight months after the opera’s premiere at the Savoy. By 1889 he was including excerpts from The Gondoliers only ten weeks after its opening.
Throughout the 1890s Stuart was active both as a song writer for the music hall, and as an interpolator into works for the musical theatre, with individual numbers being interpolated into other composers' works, a practice which Stuart would later actively oppose. Numbers composed by Stuart can be found in the scores of a whole range of shows in the mid-to-late 1890s, including An Artist's Model, for which Stuart provided several additional numbers, including the song which would bring him fame and fortune, The Soldiers of the Queen.
One of the most astonishing revelations in the biography deals with the effect of musical piracy upon Stuart's income. Andrew Lamb indicates the extent of these problems and it seems astonishing that copyright on music publishing could be so openly flaunted. Stuart and others are shown to have often had to resort to drastic actions in an attempt to protect their royalties and copyright, yet one is left with the impression that most of their efforts during the late 1890s were relatively futile; it is tempting to speculate whether Stuart's move to the musical theatre, as opposed to being a songwriter with income resultant from royalties of sheet music and performances, was due, at least in part, to a desire to avoid the loss of finances he had suffered due to musical piracy.
Andrew Lamb provides a detailed examination of the musical comedies which Stuart composed, with a wealth of information on the shows themselves, including synopsis of plots, full cast lists and details of musical numbers, changes in cast and additional numbers, and original recordings. The author traces the production history of all of Stuart's musical theatre works, starting with Florodora, both home and abroad, The Silver Slipper, The School Girl, The Belle of Mayfair, Havana, Captain Kidd, The Slim Princess and Peggy. By the time Stuart had composed the score to Peggy his fortunes were clearly on the wane. The fact that Stuart had lived a lifestyle of somewhat reckless extravagance is well known and often recounted in anecdotes of the time, but Andrew Lamb provides a greater depth of information than has been previously published anywhere. The lavish living which Stuart embraced was clearly extravagant, but in order to ease this problem he appears to have turned to money lenders, resulting in huge amounts of his income from royalties being paid off to them. The comparatively early closure of Peggy only appears to have deepened his financial situation and Stuart suffered the embarrassment of a detailed report in the Times following a meeting of his creditors in 1912. While his financial difficulties appear due, in part, to his clearly having lived above his income for many years, the Times report reveals just how much of his debt was due to moneylenders and how little income he had in consequence of this. On the one hand, Stuart does not, in fact, appear to have earned a tremendous amount from his stage works, his most profitable work by far being, unsurprisingly, Florodora which appears to have earned him almost six times that of each of his other shows. Yet his loss of earnings from musical piracy were reckoned to be equal to that which he earned in total from Florodora. When one considers that Stuart lived from 1910 for a period of two years on borrowed money, and then was charged 90% of revenue from royalties on that, it is little wonder he eventually faced bankruptcy. The biography details the facts surrounding the remaining years of Stuart's life; these were fraught with difficulties both on the financial and personal front. Peggy had only a limited success and his next complete work to be produced didn’t occur until 1914 and even then it was a far cry from his earlier successes; Bubbles was produced, not in London, but in the provinces, and was certainly not on the scale of production that Stuart had previously enjoyed. Despite the promise of a London run, this did not appear; no vocal score was printed, and only a single song appears to have been published. Bankruptcy coincided with problems in his personal life, and disharmony at home would lead to a certain over reliance on alcohol. Stuart would complain that bankruptcy proceedings, and resulting press coverage, had caused contracts with managers to be cancelled, resulting in a subsequent loss of work and difficulty in finding new work, yet it is hard to avoid the impression that Stuart could frequently, though perhaps not without just cause, be uncompromising in his attitudes. Whilst he was not the only composer who resented interpolations being inserted into his work, he was, perhaps, the most outspoken against this practice, a fact that couldn't have endeared him to managers. Andrew Lamb quotes Stuart from this period, on being invited to add interpolations into another composer's musical play being produced by George Edwardes: "I write the whole opera or nothing. Leslie Stuart does not interpolate." His final years appear to have been spent trying to attempt to see the production of his musical play Nina, also known as The Girl from Nyusa. Having signed for a production in the USA with the Shubert brothers, Stuart and his librettist, Cosmo Hamilton, suffered enormously at the hands of the American impresarios. The Shuberts had strong opinions on how this work should be presented and expressed surprise that Hamilton and Stuart should "object to Mr Smith [their "play-doctor"] lining the play with laughs, etc"! It is hardly surprising that Stuart objected to the treatment he and Hamilton received from them.
The sources indicated in the book provide evidence of a detailed and diligent research. The survival of a number of Stuart's descendants, as well as Stuart's own written recollections, taken from a wealth of contemporary interviews and articles give a greater depth to the basic details of the history of Stuart's life and work and provide us with a more comprehensive understanding of Stuart than we might otherwise have had. Andrew Lamb also provides a catalogue of compositions, all the more useful because in the early days of Stuart's life his works were published under the names of T A Barrett, Leslie Stuart and Leslie Thomas.
Following on from his biography of Leslie Stuart, Andrew Lamb has also produced a further volume dealing with the composer. In 1927, very shortly before his death, Leslie Stuart contributed a series of articles to the Evening News consisting of his memoirs and personal recollections. According to the editor's preface, Andrew Lamb only discovered the existence of these memoirs at a relatively late stage of his research on the biography. Although Leslie Stuart: Composer of Florodora makes use of the material contained in the memoirs throughout the biography, it uses material from comparatively little of the overall text. This edited and annotated version of the memoirs, published in book form for the first time, in no way simply duplicates the contents of the existing biography. The two volumes compliment and supplement each other perfectly; although either volume can be read and equally enjoyed in isolation, a study of both volumes provides a richer examination of Stuart's life and times. Andrew Lamb takes from his source materials a series of individual articles, includes several interviews and articles on Stuart that appeared in his lifetime, and edits them seamlessly together into one overall memoir which reads as though it was always intended to appear as a single volume. There are comparatively few instances where the memoirs require a great deal of explanation, but, where this is required, the editor provides concise and informative annotation. The focus of the memoirs are wide and varied, and while they obviously explore and describe Stuart's own career, the memoirs are also a vibrant exploration of contemporary life in the musical and theatrical circles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Stuart emerges as a most affable and engaging person throughout the memoirs and the book contains a wealth of anecdotal material on a tremendous number of people, performers, and creators working in the field of popular entertainment at the time. Caruso, John McCormack, Marie Loyd, Little Tich, Arthur Roberts, Eugene Stratton, George Edwardes, Charles Frohman, Billie Burke and Florenz Zeigfield, Oscar Wilde, J M Barrie, Sims Reeve, Paderewski, to name only a few, all appear in one form or another within the memoirs. There is one delightful photograph which shows Stuart towards the end of his life, in America standing alongside a crowd of contemporary composers, with Jerome Kern at one end, Irving Berlin at the other, with Rudolph Friml, Gustave Kerker, Hugo Felix, and John Philip Sousa, to name only a few, standing between them.
The volume itself is handsomely produced in trade paperback format, perfect bound, printed on good quality paper, with a liberal assortment of photographs showing the various places and people Stuart was involved with. The sources are clearly indicated for each chapter at the end of the book, and a detailed index, containing dates of birth and death for all entries, makes consultation both quick and easy. This is a fascinating volume for anyone interested in the musical theatre of the time, and is thoroughly recommended.
Andrew Lamb comments in his biography that Stuart was not, as a composer, so very far from the heights of Sullivan: "Altogether Leslie Stuart was surely more adventurous than Sullivan in the way he set out to create effects, even if those effects did not always succeed in the way that Sullivan's painstaking settings of his lyricists words did".
A statement made by Stuart in an interview that he gave to the Daily Mail in 1906, in which he commented ruefully how composers for the musical theatre were forever judged against the standard of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, strikes a chord: "We living composers either imitate - unpardonable sin - or do not imitate - which is worse". It is a perceptive summary of the problem which has resulted in the obscurity of the works, not only of Stuart, but virtually all the other creators of this period. With the publication of such excellent volumes as these we can hopefully begin to see a change in such public perceptions.