Ivan Caryll
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Felix Tilkins (May 12, 1861–November 29, 1921), better known by his pen name Ivan Caryll, was a Belgian composer of operettas and Edwardian musical comedies in the English language. He composed (or contributed to) some forty operettas and musical comedies.
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[edit] Life and career
Caryll studied at the Liege Conservatoire in Belgium and moved to London in 1882. He was married for a time in the 1890s to Gilbert and Sullivan star Geraldine Ulmar. Later, he married Maud Hill. He had a daughter named Primrose Caryll, who became an actress.
The dashing, moustachioed Caryll was known as one of the best dressed men in London. He was an extravagant spender and a popular and lavish host, entertaining his theatrical friends in princely style. Caryll's free spending ways caused him trouble occasionally, and he had a few narrow escapes from his creditors.
[edit] Early career
At first, Caryll earned a poor living by giving music lessons to women in the suburbs. Then he sold some songs to George Edwardes, who eventually hired Caryll as the musical director for the Gaiety and Lyric Theatres.
Caryll's first notable theatre piece was Lily of Léoville in 1886, followed the same year by Monte Christo Jr, a burlesque for the Gaiety Theatre, London and then by a number of shows produced for the Lyric Theatre, culminating with the very successful Little Christopher Columbus (1893). Caryll, known as a very expressive conductor, conducted W. S. Gilbert and Alfred Cellier's The Mountebanks in 1892. Cellier died during rehearsals for the piece, and Caryll had to write the overture, the entr'acte, and probably a number or two, though just which contributions are his and which are Cellier's is not clear.
Caryll's first big success at the Gaiety was The Shop Girl (1894), which ran for an almost unprecedented 546 performances and heralded a new form of respectable musical comedy in London. The composer conducted the piece himself. Meanwhile, Caryll also had success elsewhere. The Gay Parisienne (1896), written with Ernest Vousden and George Dance, ran for 369 performances at the Duke of York's Theatre.
Caryll composed the music for almost all the Gaiety musical comedies for the next decade, in collaboration with Lionel Monckton, and also established himself as the most famous conductor of light music in England. Edwardes apparently liked to have the word 'girl' in the titles of the shows, so The Shop Girl was followed by My Girl, The Circus Girl (with over 500 performances in 1896 and 1897), The Girl from Paris (1897) and A Runaway Girl (1898). The Lucky Star was a less successful three-act comic opera (1899, produced by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, based on L'Etoile, an opéra-bouffe by Emmanuel Chabrier). It may have been too risqué for the Savoy Theatre audiences.
Caryll was said to compose very quickly in intense bouts. His scores were noted for swirling waltzes and semi-operatic finales. He often took trips to Paris and elsewhere in search of new musical plays that he could adapt into English. Caryll's output also included songs, dances and salon pieces for his own light orchestra, for which Sir Edward Elgar composed his shapely Serenade Lyrique in 1899.
[edit] 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 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 Dantzig (1903), a hit comic opera based on the story of Napoleon and Madame Sans Gene, the washerwoman who married Marshal Lefebre and became a duchess.[1]
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.
[edit] Broadway musicals
Caryll relocated to New York City in 1911, composing more than a dozen Broadway musicals, including The Pink Lady (1911, with Hugh Morton), Oh! Oh! Delphine!!! (1912), Chin-Chin (1914),[2] Jack o'Lantern (1917), and The Girl Behind the Gun (Kissing Time) (Lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse) (1918). He had just completed the music for Little Miss Raffles a day before his death.
Caryll's ragtime Temple Bells (1914) is of special interest to ragtime enthusiasts.
Caryll died in New York City of a hemorrhage while rehearsing Little Miss Raffles.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Hyman, Alan (1978). Sullivan and His Satellites. London: Chappell.
- Biography of Caryll
- Brief profile of Caryll
- NY Times obituary
