Monte Cristo Jr. (Victorian burlesque)

This article is about the Victorian burlesque by Henry, Lutz, Caryll, et. al. For the musical by Romberg, Schwartz, & Atteridge, see Monte Cristo Jr. (musical).
Cover of the 1887 programme for Monte Cristo Jr.

Monte Cristo Jr. was a Victorian burlesque with a libretto written by Richard Henry, a pseudonym for the writers Richard Butler and Henry Chance Newton. The score was composed by Meyer Lutz, Ivan Caryll, Hamilton Clarke, Tito Mattei, G. W. Hunt and Henry J. Leslie. The ballet and incidental dances were arranged by John D'Auban, and the theatre's musical director, Meyer Lutz, conducted.[1] The play's doggerel verse was loosely based on The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.[2]

The piece was first performed under the management of George Edwardes, premiering at the Gaiety Theatre in London on 23 December 1886. Nellie Farren, E. J. Lonnen, Fred Leslie, Marion Hood and Jenny Lind appeared in the cast during the run, which ended in early October 1887.[2] It was then toured in Britain, and the following year it was mounted in New York and toured in Australia.

A separate musical of the same name (except with a comma after "Cristo") premiered on Broadway in 1919, composed by Sigmund Romberg.

  1. ^ Theatre Programme for Monte Cristo Jr. (1887) at the Gaiety Theatre, London
  2. ^ a b Bordman, Gerald and Richard Norton. American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, Oxford University Press (4th edition, 2011), p. 110