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 musical comedy and operetta 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. He moved to London in 1882. Caryll was married for a time in the 1890s to Geraldine Ulmar. The dashing, moustachioed Caryll prided himself on being one of the best dressed men in town, and he was known as an extravagant spender and was a popular and lavish host, entertaining his theatrical friends in princely style. Caryll's extravagance landed him in trouble from time to time, 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.
His first notable piece was Lily of Léoville in (1886), followed by a number of shows produced for the Lyric Theatre in London, 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 he probably wrote a number or two, though just what is his and what is Cellier's is not clear.
Caryll's first 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.
Caryll composed the scores of nearly 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. He apparently liked to have the word 'girl' in the titles of his 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.
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
In the new century, Caryll wrote the scores of The Messenger Boy (1900), The Toreador (1901) (with well over 600 performances), The Little Cherub, 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 was created 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) and The New Aladdin (1906), and the even more successful Our Miss Gibbs (1909), which had 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 in 1911, composing more than a dozen Broadway musicals, including The Pink Lady (1911) (with Hugh Morton (dramatist)), Oh! Oh! Delphine!!! (1912), Chin-Chic (1914), Jack o'Lantern (1917), and The Girl Behind the Gun (Kissing Time) (Lyrics by Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse) (1918). He had just completed the music for Little Miss Raffles a week before his death.
Caryll's ragtime Temple Bells (1914) is of special interest to ragtime enthusiasts.
Caryll died in New York City.
