THE GEISHA (Sidney Jones) Bayswater 2013 Catherine Adey, Kent Martin, Victoria Lock, Paul Tooby
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: The Geisha
- Composer: Jones Sidney
- Libretto: Owen Hall, with lyrics by Harry Greenbank Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Knox Community Theatre, Bayswater, Victoria Australia, Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Victoria GSOV
- Recorded: July 2013
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Catherine Adey, Kent Martin, Victoria Lock, Paul Tooby, Andrew McGrail, Ron Pidcock, Lauren Stannard
- Conductor: John Ferguson
- Orchestra:
- Stage Director: Robert Ray
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: GSOV
- Date Published: 2013
- Format: DVD
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs, gensubs
- Video Recording from: GSOV FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
The Geisha, a story of a tea house is an Edwardian musical comedy in two acts. The score was composed by Sidney Jones to a libretto by Owen Hall, with lyrics by Harry Greenbank. Additional songs were written by Lionel Monckton and James Philp.
The Geisha opened in 1896 at Daly’s Theatre in London’s West End, produced by George Edwardes. The original production had the second longest run of any musical up to that time. The cast starred Marie Tempest and C. Hayden Coffin, with dancer Letty Lind and comic Huntley Wright. The show was an immediate success abroad, with an 1896 production in New York and numerous tours and productions in Europe and beyond. It continued to be popular until World War II and even beyond to some degree. The most famous song from the show is “The Amorous Goldfish”.
Act I
Stationed in Japan, far from his fiancée Molly, Lt. Reggie Fairfax of the Royal Navy is lonely. He begins to spend much of his free time at the Tea House of Ten Thousand Joys which is run by Chinaman Wun-Hi. There he meets the geisha O Mimosa San, with whom he builds a friendship, but she is in love with Katana, a soldier, so she discourages him with her tale of ‘The Amorous Goldfish’. However, Reggie gives Mimosa a lesson in kissing.
The relationship does not go unnoticed by Lady Constance Wynne, a touring English aristocrat, who catches Reggie engaged in his tête-a-tête with Mimosa and reminds him that he is engaged to Molly. Lady Constance contacts Molly, telling her to travel to Japan as quickly as possible. The local overlord Marquis Imari, who also fancies Mimosa, is annoyed that his intended bride is consorting with the newly-arrived British sailors, and he orders that the teahouse be closed and the girls be sold off. The Marquis himself is pursued by the French interpreter Juliette.
Molly arrives unexpectedly. Left alone, Molly is joined by Mimosa and Lady Constance, who tell her how fond Reggie has become of one geisha in particular. Mimosa then suggests that Molly should dress up as a geisha herself to try and win him back. It is now time for the sale of the geishas’ indentures. The Marquis tries to buy Mimosa for himself, but Lady Constance manages to outbid him to keep her out of his clutches. Unfortunately, she cannot stop him from purchasing lot number 2, a new geisha called Roli Poli whom nobody has seen before. Only after the Marquis has made his purchase is it revealed that this geisha is actually Molly in disguise.
Act II
In the chrysanthemum gardens of the Imari palace, Molly, still disguised as Roli Poli, awaits her impending marriage to the Marquis, who has become much attracted to her. Mimosa proposes a plan to save Molly from her fate: Mimosa will sneak into the bridal suite and exchange the veiled Molly for another veiled bride – Juliette, the French interpreter.
The wedding ceremony starts, and the plan is put into effect: Juliette is exchanged with Molly, and the Marquis unwittingly marries the wrong bride. On discovering the ruse, he accepts his fate philosophically, concluding that “every man is disappointed in his wife at some time or other”. Mimosa is now free to marry her lover Katana, and Molly is re-united with Reggie, declaring that she would never marry a foreign nobleman when she could have a British sailor.
Quoted from Wikipedia