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Adrian Ross

Arthur Reed Ropes (December 23, 1859 – September 10, 1933), better known under the pseudonym Adrian Ross, was a writer of lyrics for more than 60 British musical comedies in the late 19th and early 20th century. He served as the senior lyricist of the British stage for over five decades.

Contents

  • 1 Life and career
    • 1.1 Early career
    • 1.2 Later career
    • 1.3 Musicals
  • 2 References
  • 3 External links

Life and career

Ross was born in Lewisham. He was a Cambridge University graduate and don, historian, and translator of French and German literature and won the Chancellor's Medal for verse. He created the fictitious name due to a concern that writing musicals would compromise his academic career.

Early career

Ross's first work for the stage was the book and lyrics for a burlesque, Faddimir (1889), with music by fellow Cambridge graduate, Frank Osmond Carr. The piece earned enough praise so that the impressario George Edwardes commissioned the two to write another burlesque, together with the experienced comedian John Shine, Joan of Arc (1891). Songs from that success included "I Went to Find Emin", "Round the Town", and`"Jack the Dandy-O". Ross and Carr's next work, In Town (1892), a smart tale of backstage and society intrigue, broke away from the burlesque style and helped set the new fashion for the series of Gaiety musical hits that followed.

Lily Elsie in The Dollar Princess
Lily Elsie in The Dollar Princess

For his next piece, Morocco Bound (1893, with the song "Marguerite from Monte Carlo"), Ross limited himself almost entirely to writing lyrics, which proved to be his most successful model through most of his career. The position of "lyricist" was relatively new, as previously the writers of libretti would invariably write the lyrics themselves. As the new Edwardes-style "musical comedies" took the place of comic opera and operetta on the stage, Ross and Harry Greenbank established the usefulness of a separate lyricist.

Ross contributed lyrics to virtually all of the Gaiety Theatre's shows, beginning with The Shop Girl (1894, with the song "Brown of Colorado"). In 1896, he contributed to the Gaiety Theatre hit, The Circus Girl and also wrote lyrics for the one-act comic opera, Weather or No, which played as a companion piece to The Mikado at the Savoy Theatre. Ross also wrote additional numbers for the shows at Daly's Theatre. His small contributions to An Artist's Model (1895) and The Geisha (1896) were successful enough so that Edwardes asked him for major contributions to the rest, beginning with A Greek Slave (1898), especially after the death of Harry Greenbank. During the following years, Ross collaborated on a series of enormous successes, including San Toy (1899), The Messenger Boy (1900), The Toreador (1901), A Country Girl (1902), The Girl from Kays (1903), The Orchid (1903), The Cingalee (1904), The Spring Chicken (1905) and The Girls of Gottenberg (1907).

Gertie Millar and Robert Evett in A Waltz Dream
Gertie Millar and Robert Evett in A Waltz Dream

When Edwardes switched to continental European operettas, Ross wrote English lyrics for the songs to go with the new English adaptations. His words to the songs in The Merry Widow (1907) became the standard English version of that piece, performed throughout the world for many decades. Other Continental musicals that Ross anglicized included A Waltz Dream (1908), The Girl in the Train (1910), The Dollar Princess (1909), The Count of Luxembourg (1911), The Girl on the Film (1913) and The Marriage Market (1913), all of which had a wide and enduring success in their English versions. Other successes from this period were King of Cadonia (1908), Our Miss Gibbs (1909), The Quaker Girl (1911), and Betty in 1915.

Later career

Ross continued, after the Edwardes's death, to write lyrics for shows at the Gaiety, Daly's, the Adelphi Theatre, and other London theatres. As tastes changed the "revue" became popular, and Ross worked with Herman Darewski on Three Cheers (1917) and with Lionel Monckton on Airs and Graces. After the onset of World War I, he wrote lyrics for a number of successful shows, including the musicalized French comedy Theodore & Co (1916), the hit The Boy (1917), and André Messager's adaptation of Booth Tarkington's Monsieur Beaucaire (1919, "Philomel"). In 1922, he wrote both the book and the lyrics for the popular English version of "Das Dreimäderlhaus", the international hit based on Franz Schubert's music and life, produced in Britain as Lilac Time. In 1927, Ross collaborated with Australian composer Dudley Glass on a musical version of W. J. Locke's The Beloved Vagabond. His last works included the English version of Ludwig Herzer and Fritz Lohner-Beda's libretto to the operetta Friederike and a musical version of Austin Strong's The Toymaker of Nuremberg played as a Christmas entertainment.

Ross wrote regularly and extensively with the most successful British-based composers of his time, including Caryll, Monckton, and Leslie Stuart at the Gaiety and Sidney Jones, at Daly's and, later, Howard Talbot and Messager. Sixteen of his musicals ran for more than 400 performances. Ross tailored each song to fit the style required by the producer -- songs for the Gaiety were different from those for Daly's. Many of his adaptations are still performed today.

Ross also wrote the popular horror novel The Hole of the Pit and a number of short stories. Set in 1645, during the English Civil War, and dedicated to M. R. James, the novel tells of a loathsome entity which inhabits a flooded pit amid the marshes surrounding the castle belonging to a brutal Cavalier. The book is notable for its depth of characterisation - the narrator, a young Puritan scholar who has refused to join Oliver Cromwell's army because of his objections to religious violence, is a compassionate man who sees the good in everyone, including the villains - and for its subtle depiction of the creature in the hole, which is never completely seen even as it overwhelms the castle. The novel was published in 1914 and never reprinted until Ramsey Campbell collected it in his 1992 anthology Uncanny Banquet.

Ross died in London at the age of 73.

Musicals

Ross contributed lyrics to the following musicals, often in collaboration with other lyricists:

Cover of the Vocal Score
Cover of the Vocal Score
The Count of Luxembourg
The Count of Luxembourg

References

External links