Gems from Madame Sherry

September 30, 1914

Victor 35410

Composer is Karl L. Hoschna

1) The smile she means for you
2) The butterfly
3) Every little movement
4) The birth of passion
5) For we're only poor weak mortals
6) Every little movement
7) We're off for an ocean sail

The Victor Light Opera Company was active from mid-1909 into the 1930s.

Among the regular members of the Victor Light Opera Company were Elise Stevenson, Lucy Marsh, Elsie Baker, Lambert Murphy, Richard Crooks, Elizabeth and John Wheeler, Billy Murray, Olive Kline, Harry Macdonough, and Reinald Werrenrath.

This was a group of singers who recorded medleys from popular light operas, musical comedies, revues, and early musical motion pictures.

Typically a chorus of voices opens a performance. Then soloists or duos are given less than a minute each to deliver the chorus of a hit song from the featured musical show. Then the chorus returns to deliver the finale.

Soloists are not identified on labels for Victor Light Opera Company productions.

Had individuals been identified on labels, the company might have been more widely regarded as an all-star ensemble of record artists.

Singers changed almost from session to session though in early years a handful of singers were featured regularly as soloists, namely Harry Macdonough, Reinald Werrenrath, Elizabeth Wheeler, and Lucy Isabelle Marsh. Uncredited soloists throughout the acoustic era were usually exclusive to Victor. Free-lance artists such as Henry Burr and Arthur Collins were not included in medleys. Some productions included singers who seem to have made no other records. For example, Victor logs show that the obscure Frances Hosea contributed to some productions.

Many discs in Victor's "Gems" series make available the only recordings of songs from shows that were once popular but are now mostly forgotten.

The "Gems" series began when American musical theater was becoming distinctly American, fewer musical comedies imitating European models). Around 1910 Viennese operetta influenced American musical theater, and the Victor Light Opera Company did record medleys of shows by Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, and Oscar Straus.

Composers offering scores with a distinctly American flavor were also emerging, Jerome Kern making his special contributions to American musical comedy within a few years. Medleys of several Kern shows are performed by the Victor Light Opera Company, beginning with The Girl From Utah in 1914.

Each show that was given a medley treatment by the Victor Light Opera Company was genuinely popular in its time, and not many hugely successful shows produced between 1910 and 1930 were spared the medley treatment.

Notable exceptions include Watch Your Step, which was the first musical show with a score entirely by Irving Berlin, as well as Robinson Crusoe, Jr. and Sinbad, both of which had starred Al Jolson (Jolson himself recorded for Columbia the shows' best numbers).

Many musical works featured in the "Gems" series had been first performed on stage decades earlier. Wallace's Maritana was the oldest work to be given a medley treatment. It opened in 1848.

Performances were issued on twelve-inch discs except for a few ten-inch discs issued during the months when the company was formed.

For several years Walter B. Rogers supervised medley recordings.

When the company was formed in 1909, its roster consisted of S. H. Dudley, Frederick Gunster, William F. Hooley, Harry Macdonough, Billy Murray, Frank C. Stanley, Elise Stevenson, and Elizabeth Wheeler. Macdonough and Hooley remained soloists for years. For short comic numbers Billy Murray was used in over a dozen productions.

The retirement of principal singers presented opportunities for other singers. When Elise Stevenson retired, Lucy Isabelle Marsh became the ensemble's main soprano. Next, Olive Kline--much younger than Marsh--shared the principal soprano position.

Singers came and went, but until 1924 they included Macdonough, Marsh, Hooley, Reinald Werrenrath, Elizabeth and William Wheeler, Wilfred Glenn, Olive Kline, Marguerite Dunlap, Elsie Baker, Lambert Murphy, Charles Hart, Royal Dadmun, Charles Harrison, and Richard Crooks.

In Victor's 1912 and 1913 catalogs are photographs of twenty singers above a caption stating, "Some principal members of the Victor Light Opera Company." Photographs are of Werrenrath, Marsh, Hooley, Dudley, Baker, Stevenson, Macdonough, Dunlap, William and Elizabeth Wheeler, John Bieling, Steve Porter, John Barnes Wells, Harriette Keyes, Ada Jones, Murray, George M. Carré, Frederick Gunster, and Inez Barbour.

Singers who participated regularly were highly trained musicians. Tempos changed abruptly, and an error by any one singer could mean that a take was ruined. On nearly each production, singing dominates from beginning to end.

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