On October 26, 1903, in the presence of His Majesty King Edward VI and Queen Alexandra, the new Gaiety Theatre opened with the premiere of the musical comedy The Orchid in which Gertie Millar starred as Lady Violet Anstruther, the principal pupil at a horticultural college. The show ran for 559 performances.
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Lovely pc, she is far more beautiful than her name might suggest.
ReplyDeleteHey Lisa, what happened to your blog, I hope you didn't run out of old photos... And to answer your comment, at first I was convinced that her name was Miller, so now I know better to me her name is special.
DeleteThat photo certainly makes Gertie stand out like a shining beacon!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if those kids are supposed to be begrimed street urchins? I was unfamiliar with the musical or comedy, but a lot of these things are buried by time.
ReplyDelete559 performances? My goodness, it must have been very popular... it is a shame that these great performances are forever lost to time. I suppose we are spoiled today thanks to cinematography; we always know when we see a great film that we will be able to re-live the performances at some point in the future. Don't you imagine with early theater you would want to absorb the acts into your memory to recall perhaps in the future. I guess my point is, how sad that I missed this musical comedy - sounds good (guess I'll have to read the book...) - thanks Rob
ReplyDeleteThose pre-TV days had much charm. You can still listen to the music if you can handle midi files (http://www.halhkmusic.com/orchid.html), although I doubt that's what the composer had in mind in 1903 :-).
DeleteI did visit that midi page when I visited the wiki page linked in the article. I tried to imagine the orchestration that would have been enjoyed "back in the day" - I learned to appreciate the midi file (& mods too) from my 600 baud modem days. A lot of music packed into a small file. I suppose they represent the charm of pre-internet days. ;)
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