1.
Rose-Marie
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Rose-Marie is an operetta-style musical with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, and book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. The story takes place in the Canadian Rockies and concerns Rose-Marie La Flemme, when Jim falls under suspicion for murder, her brother Emile plans for Rose-Marie to marry Edward Hawley, a city man. The work premiered on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre on September 2,1924 and it was the longest-running Broadway musical of the 1920s until it was surpassed by The Student Prince. It was then produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London in 1925 and it was filmed in 1928, in 1936 and again in 1954. The best-known song from the musical is Indian Love Call and it became Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddys signature song. Several other numbers have become standards, including the title song. Producer Arthur Hammerstein, attempting to create popular new Broadway shows in the tradition, sought exotic. The Fortune Teller is set in Hungary, The Merry Widow takes place in France and he sent his nephew, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Otto Harbach to Quebec, Canada, to witness a rumored magnificent ice sculpture festival. The men reported that there was not, nor had ever been. Arthur Hammerstein still liked the Canadian setting, and Oscar Hammerstein II, Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart collaborated on the score, and opera star Mary Ellis was cast in the title role. British actor and singer Dennis King was cast opposite her as Jim Kenyon, stage versions Rose-Marie premiered on September 2,1924 at the Imperial Theatre in New York City, running for 557 performances. Direction was by Paul Dickey and choreography was by Dave Bennett, the orchestrations were by Robert Russell Bennett. Costumes were designed by Charles LeMaire, and settings were by Gates and it had a brief revival on Broadway in 1927. It was then produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London in 1925, the original West End production had a chorus of eighty. It was Londons most successful Broadway show after World War I until it was surpassed by Oklahoma, in Paris, Rose-Marie ran for an unprecedented 1,250 performances. A touring company premiered the work in Canada on January 12,1925 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, and the piece toured Australia and played in Paris. In recent decades, it has produced by the Light Opera of Manhattan several times in the 1970s and 1980s, the Shaw Festival in Canada, Light Opera Works of Illinois. Film versions The show has filmed three times, including a silent film in 1928
2.
Operetta
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Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. By this time, the part of the genre name had become misleading. With this new connotation, opéra comique had dominated the French operatic stage since the decline of tragédie lyrique, most researchers acknowledge that the credit for creating the operetta form should go to Hervé, a singer, composer, librettist, conductor, and scene painter. In 1842 he wrote the little opérette, LOurs et le pacha, based on the vaudeville show by Scribe. In 1848, Hervé made his first notable appearance on the Parisian stage, with Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança, hervés most famous works are the Gounod-parody Le Petit Faust and Mamzelle Nitouche. Jacques Offenbach further developed and popularized operetta, giving it its enormous vogue during the Second Empire, Offenbachs earliest one-act pieces included Les deux aveugles, Le violoneux and Ba-ta-clan, and his first full-length operetta success was Orphée aux enfers. Offenbachs tradition was carried on by Robert Planquette, André Messager. What characterizes Offenbachs operettas is both the way they portray life, and the extremely frivolous way this is done. The character was modeled after Offenbachs female star Hortense Schneider. Considering how Zolas Nana describes an Offenbach-style operetta performance in Paris, it is not surprising that the mostly male, upper-class audiences in other cities like Vienna and Berlin longed to see these shows in their home towns as well, which inspired worldwide performance of Offenbachs works. The highly erotic way Offenbachs operettas were originally played, with stars like Hortense Schneider created a reaction from certain parts of the general public. Operetta was considered an art form. Indeed, together with its grotesque qualities, frivolity is one of the elements of authentic operetta à la Offenbach. It was only later, when audiences widened and became more middle and lower class, the most significant composer of operetta in the German language was the Austrian Johann Strauss II. His first operetta was Indigo und die vierzig Räuber and his third operetta, Die Fledermaus, became the most performed operetta in the world, and remains his most popular stage work. Its libretto was based on a written by Offenbachs librettists. In all, Strauss wrote 16 operettas and one opera, most with great success when first premiered, many of his lesser operettas are now largely forgotten, since his later librettists were less talented and he often composed independently of the plot. Strausss operettas, waltzes, polkas, and marches often have a strongly Viennese style, the Theater an der Wien never failed to draw huge crowds when his stage works were first performed
3.
Rudolf Friml
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Charles Rudolf Friml was a Czech-born composer of operettas, musicals, songs and piano pieces, as well as a pianist. After musical training and a performing career in his native Prague, Friml moved to the United States. His best-known works are Rose-Marie and The Vagabond King, each of which enjoyed success on Broadway, born in Prague, Czech Republic Friml showed aptitude for music at an early age. He entered the Prague Conservatory in 1895, where he studied the piano, Friml was expelled from the conservatory in 1901 for performing without permission. In Prague and later in America he composed and published songs, piano pieces and other music, including the set of songs. The last of these, Za tichych noci, later became the basis for a film in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1941. After the conservatory, Friml took a position as accompanist to the violinist Jan Kubelík and he toured with Kubelik twice in the United States and moved there permanently in 1906, apparently with the support of the Czech singer Emmy Destinn. His first post in New York was as a repetiteur at the Metropolitan Opera and he had made his American piano debut at Carnegie Hall in 1904, and premiered his Piano Concerto in B major in 1906 with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Walter Damrosch. He settled for a time in Los Angeles where he married Mathilde Baruch. They had two children, Charles Rudolf and Marie Lucille, the first three marriages ended in divorce. One of the most popular theatrical forms in the decades of the 20th century in America was the operetta. It was announced in 1912 that operetta diva Emma Trentini would be starring in a new operetta on Broadway by Herbert with lyricist Otto Harbach entitled The Firefly, shortly before the writing of the operetta, Trentini appeared in a special performance of Herberts Naughty Marietta conducted by Herbert himself. When Trentini refused to sing Italian Street Song for the encore, arthur Hammerstein, the operettas sponsor, frantically began to search for another composer. Not finding any other composer who could compose as well as Herbert. After a month of work, Friml produced the score for what would be his first theatrical success, after tryouts in Syracuse, New York, The Firefly opened at the Lyric Theatre on December 2,1912 to a warm reception by both the audience and the critics. The production moved to the Casino Theatre after Christmas, where it ran until March 15,1913, after The Firefly, Friml produced three more operettas that each had longer runs than The Firefly, although they are not as enduringly successful. These were High Jinks, Katinka and Youre in Love and he also contributed songs to a musical in 1915 entitled The Peasant Girl. Trentini was named as a co-respondent in Frimls divorce from his first wife in 1915, another show, Sometime, written with Rida Johnson Young and starring Ed Wynn and Mae West, ran well on Broadway in 1918–1919
4.
Otto Harbach
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Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of about 50 musical comedies. He was Oscar Hammerstein IIs mentor and believed that librettists should integrate songs into the plot and he is considered one of the first great lyricists, and helped raise the status of the lyricist in an age concerned more with music, costumes, and stars. Some of his more famous lyrics are for Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Indian Love Call and Cuddle up a Little Closer, Harbach was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to Danish immigrant parents Adolph Christiansen and his wife Sena Olsen. His parents changed their name when they immigrated to the United States, and took the name of the farm they worked on, and their new last name was Hauerbach. He attended the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute, transferring to Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois, where he was a friend of Carl Sandburg, joined Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, Knox has since named its 599-seat Harbach Theatre in his honor. He obtained his masters degree in English from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, in the early 1900s, complaining of eye difficulties making prolonged reading uncomfortable, he became a newspaper reporter. He also worked at advertising agencies. He also worked at a firm, as a copywriter in advertising. He would have to pull out of Columbia when he could not financially support himself, in 1902, he spotted an advertisement with a picture of Fay Templeton for a new Joe Weber and Lew Fields musical. He had not been interested in theatre but more in literary classics, in the same year, he met Karl Hoschna. They wrote an opera together, but no producer would pick it up. Isidore Witmark then contacted Hoschna, his employee, and told him he wanted to turn Mary Pachecos play Incog into a musical, Hoschna then contacted Harbach, and so began the partnership. The result, with Whitmark and Charles Dickson writing the libretto, was Three Twins and their next collaboration was Madame Sherry in 1910, adapting a 1902 German operetta with Jack Gardner in the lead role. The show featured a song that was not theirs, the Albert von Tilzer and Junie McCree song Put Your Arms Around Me and they would collaborate for four more shows until Hoschna died in 1911, at the age of thirty-four. After working with Hoschna, his works had given somewhat of a name for himself, arthur Hammerstein asked Harbach in 1912 to write the lyrics to an operetta with Rudolf Friml, called The Firefly. Hammerstein could not find anyone as talented as Herbert, but settled on the unknown Friml because of his classical training, the result was a huge success, and it would spell eleven more musicals, including High Jinks and Katinka. Most of the shows they wrote together ran for over 200 performances, in 1914, he contributed the libretto only to the Percy Wenrich musical The Crinoline Girl. In 1917, he shortened his name from Hauerbach to Harbach to avoid anti-German sentiment caused by World War I and he would also work with composer Louis Hirsch during this time, and would score his biggest success so far in 1917 with Going Up
5.
Oscar Hammerstein II
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Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song, many of his songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz musicians. Hammerstein was the lyricist and playwright in his partnerships, his collaborators wrote the music, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was born in New York City and his grandfather was the German theatre impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. His father was from a Jewish family, and his mother was the daughter of Scottish and English parents, although Hammersteins father managed the Victoria Theatre for his father and was a producer of vaudeville shows, he was opposed to his sons desire to participate in the arts. Hammerstein attended Columbia University and studied at Columbia Law School until 1917, as a student, he maintained high grades and engaged in numerous extracurricular activities. These included playing first base on the team, performing in the Varsity Show and becoming an active member of Pi Lambda Phi. When he was 19, and still a student at Columbia, his father died of Brights disease, June 10,1914, symptoms of which doctors originally attributed to scarlet fever. On the train trip to the funeral with his brother, he read the headlines in the New York Herald, the New York Times wrote, Hammerstein, the Barnum of Vaudeville, Dead at Forty. Two hours later, taps was sounded over Broadway, writes biographer Hugh Fordin, after his fathers death, he participated in his first play with the Varsity Show, entitled On Your Way. Throughout the rest of his career, Hammerstein wrote and performed in several Varsity Shows. After quitting law school to pursue theatre, Hammerstein began his first professional collaboration, with Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach and he began as an apprentice and went on to form a 20-year collaboration with Harbach. Out of this came his first musical, Always You, for which he wrote the book. It opened on Broadway in 1920, in 1927, Kern and Hammerstein had their biggest hit, Show Boat, which is often revived and is still considered one of the masterpieces of the American musical theatre. Here we come to a new genre — the musical play as distinguished from musical comedy. The play was the thing, and everything else was subservient to that play, came complete integration of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic entity. Many years later, Hammersteins wife Dorothy bristled when she heard a remark that Jerome Kern had written Ol Man River, Jerome Kern wrote dum, dum, dum-dum. My husband wrote Ol Man River, other Kern-Hammerstein musicals include Sweet Adeline, Music in the Air, Three Sisters, and Very Warm for May
6.
Mary Ellis
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After appearing with the Metropolitan Opera beginning in 1918, later appearing opposite Enrico Caruso, she acted on Broadway, creating the title role in Rose-Marie. In 1930, she emigrated to England, where she gained additional fame and she was also well known for her film roles, including The 3 Worlds of Gulliver in 1960. Ellis was born May Belle Elsas in New York City in 1897, to a German father Herman Elsas, later in the run, she also played Lauretta in the third opera of the triptych, Gianni Schicchi. She also appeared in the premiere of Loiseau bleu by Albert Wolff, singing Mytyl, while in the Metropolitan company she sang Giannetta in Lelisir damore to Enrico Carusos Nemorino and Fyodor in Boris Godunov to Feodor Chaliapins Boris. She gained additional notice by creating the role in Rudolf Frimls light musical operetta Rose-Marie in 1924 and played in The Taming of the Shrew. In 1929 she acted the role of Becky Sharp in the Players Club production of Vanity Fair. She also played Leah in The Neighborhood Playhouses 1925 adaptation of S. Anskys The Dybbuk, in 1930 Ellis settled in London, having emigrated to England with her third husband, Basil Sydney, whom she had married in 1929. She also appeared in a version of Glamorous Night in 1937. For most of the Second World War, Ellis abandoned the theatre, performing work in hospitals. Returning to the stage after the war, Ellis was successful in Noël Cowards 1947 melodrama, Point Valaine, playing a hotel keeper in a sordid, in 1948 she gave one of her most praised performances as the embittered Millie Crocker-Harris in Terence Rattigans The Browning Version. In 1952 she played Volumnia in Coriolanus with Anthony Quayle for the nine-month Stratford season, in 1954 Ellis was cast as Mrs. Erlynne in Cowards musical After the Ball, but her singing voice had deteriorated drastically, and much of her music had to be cut. Coward blamed her performance for the failure of the show. She appeared in the 1960 movie The 3 Worlds of Gulliver and made her last stage appearance in 1970 and she appeared in 1993 in the television series Sherlock Holmes and again in 1994, playing Mary Maberley. Ellis published her memoirs in 1982 under the title Those Dancing Years, a further autobiography Moments of Truth followed in 1986. She became a centenarian in 1998 and died in London on January 30,2003 and she had the distinction of being the last surviving star to perform in a Puccini opera and the last star to perform opposite Caruso
7.
Canadian Rockies
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The Canadian Rockies comprise the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains. They are the part of the Canadian Cordillera, which is a system of multiple ranges of mountains which runs from the Canadian Prairies to the Pacific Coast. The southern end borders Idaho and Montana of the USA, in geographic terms the boundary is at the Canada/US border, but in geological terms it might be considered to be at Marias Pass in northern Montana. The northern end is at the Liard River in northern British Columbia, the Canadian Rockies have numerous high peaks and ranges, such as Mount Robson and Mount Columbia. The Canadian Rockies are composed of shale and limestone, much of the range is protected by national and provincial parks, several of which collectively comprise a World Heritage Site. The Canadian Rockies are the easternmost part of the Canadian Cordillera and they form part of the American Cordillera, an essentially continuous sequence of mountain ranges that runs all the way from Alaska to the very tip of South America. The Cordillera in turn are the part of the Pacific Ring of Fire that runs all the way around the Pacific Ocean. The Canadian Rockies are bounded on the east by the Canadian Prairies, on the west by the Rocky Mountain Trench, contrary to popular misconception, the Rockies do not extend north into Yukon or Alaska, or west into central British Columbia. North of the Liard River, the Mackenzie Mountains, which are a mountain range. The mountain ranges to the west of the Rocky Mountain Trench in southern British Columbia are called the Columbia Mountains, and are not considered to be part of the Rockies by Canadian geologists. Mount Robson is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, but not the highest in British Columbia, since there are higher mountains in the Coast Mountains. Its base is only 985 m above sea level, meaning it has a vertical relief of 2,969 m or nearly 10,000 feet. In addition, it rises the 3 km to its summit in a distance of only 4 km from its base at Kinney Lake, climbing Mount Robson is a challenge suitable for experienced and well-prepared mountaineers, and usually requires a week on the mountain. Mount Columbia is the second-highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, and is the highest mountain in Alberta, there is a non-technical route to the top involving only kicking steps in the snow, but the approach is across the Columbia Icefield and requires glacier travel and crevasse rescue knowledge. It is normally done in two days, with a night at camp, but some strong skiers have done it from the highway in a day. On the other hand, many others have been stuck in their tents for days waiting for the weather to clear. From the same camp as for Mount Columbia, it is possible to ascend a number of other high peaks in the area, including North Twin, South Twin, Kitchener, Stutfield. Snow Dome is not a peak by Rockies standards
