Ivan Caryll - Life and Career - 20th Century London Pieces

20th Century London Pieces

After the turn of the century, Caryll wrote more successful scores, including The Messenger Boy (1900), The Toreador (1901) (with well over 600 performances), The Ladies' Paradise (1901) (the first musical comedy to be presented at the Metropolitan Opera in New York), The Girl From Kays (1902), The Earl and the Girl (1903; another success, starring Walter Passmore and Henry Lytton), The Orchid (1903), and The Duchess of Dantzic (1903), a comic opera based on the story of Napoleon and Madame Sans-Gêne, the washerwoman who married Marshal Lefebvre and became a duchess. During the Christmas season of 1903, he had what was at that time the unparalleled distinction of having five musicals running at the same time in the West End.

Despite these successes, Caryll began to grow jealous of Monckton, who often wrote the most popular numbers in the shows. Still, they continued to work together, producing the successful The Spring Chicken (1905), The Little Cherub (1906), The New Aladdin (1906), The Girls of Gottenberg (1907), and the even more successful Our Miss Gibbs (1909), which ran for 636 performances. Typical of the plots of these shows, Our Miss Gibbs concerns a shop girl, courted by an earl in disguise.

Many of Caryll's musicals were given in Paris, Vienna, and Budapest at a time when the English-language musicals were largely ignored on the continent, and he composed original scores for Paris (S.A.R., or Son altesse royale, 1908) and Vienna (Die Reise nach Cuba, 1901).