The Merry Widow - English Adaptations

English Adaptations

In its English adaptation by Basil Hood, with lyrics by Adrian Ross, the operetta became a sensation in London, beginning on 8 June 1907, starring Lily Elsie and Joseph Coyne and featuring Robert Evett and Gabrielle Ray, with costumes by Lucile. It ran for 778 performances in London and toured extensively in Great Britain. The English version opened on 21 October 1907 at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway for another very successful run of 416 performances and played in Australia in 1908. Thereafter, it was played frequently in America and throughout the English-speaking world, and is still frequently revived in English. In London, the first performance by The Royal Opera was in 1997. The Metropolitan Opera had mounted the opera 18 times by 2003.

In the 1970s, the Light Opera of Manhattan, a year-round professional light opera repertory company in New York City, commissioned Alice Hammerstein Mathias, the daughter of Oscar Hammerstein II, to create a new English adaptation, which was extremely successful for that company in its many revivals of the production until the company closed at the end of the 1980s.

Essgee Entertainment staged productions of The Merry Widow in capital cities around Australia during 1998 and 1999. A prologue was added featuring a narrative by Jon English and a ballet introducing the earlier romance of Anna and Danilo. The production opened in Brisbane, with Jeffrey Black as Danilo, Helen Donaldson as "Anna", Simon Gallaher as Camille and English as Baron Zeta. In some performances, during the production's Brisbane run, Jason Barry-Smith appeared as Danilo. In Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide in 1999, John O'May appeared as Danilo, Marina Prior as "Hanna", Max Gillies as Zeta, Gallaher as Camille and Donaldson as Valencienne.