B. C. Stephenson
Encyclopedia
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
theatre. His biggest hit was the comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
Dorothy
Dorothy (opera)
Dorothy is a comic opera in three acts with music by Alfred Cellier and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson. The story involves a rake who falls in love with his disguised fiancée.It was first produced at the Gaiety Theatre in London on in 1886...
, which set records for the length of its original run.
His writing collaborators included Clement Scott
Clement Scott
Clement Scott was an influential English theatre critic for the Daily Telegraph, and a playwright and travel writer, in the final decades of the 19th century...
and Brandon Thomas
Brandon Thomas
Walter Brandon Thomas was an English actor, playwright and song writer, best known as the author of the farce Charley's Aunt....
, and composers with whom he worked included Frederic Clay
Frederic Clay
Frederic Emes Clay was an English composer known principally for his music written for the stage. Clay, a great friend of Arthur Sullivan's, wrote four comic operas with W. S...
and Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier was an English composer, orchestrator and conductor.In addition to conducting and music directing the original productions of several of the most famous Gilbert and Sullivan works and writing the overtures to some of them, Cellier conducted at many theatres in London, New York and...
. He is remembered by some for his collaboration with Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
on The Zoo
The Zoo
The Zoo is a one-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson, writing under the pen name of Bolton Rowe. It premiered on 5 June 1875 at the St. James's Theatre in London , concluding its run five weeks later, on 9 July 1875, at the Haymarket Theatre...
, which continues to be revived today.
Early years
Stephenson, the son of Sir William Henry Stephenson, came from a family with a history of public service, both civil and military. His grandfather, also named Benjamin Charles Stephenson, was a major-generalMajor-General (United Kingdom)
Major general is a senior rank in the British Army. Since 1996 the highest position within the Royal Marines is the Commandant General Royal Marines who holds the rank of major general...
and later one of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. Stephenson's father became a civil servant, rising to become chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue
Inland Revenue
The Inland Revenue was, until April 2005, a department of the British Government responsible for the collection of direct taxation, including income tax, national insurance contributions, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, corporation tax, petroleum revenue tax and stamp duty...
. The young Stephenson was commissioned into the Middlesex Militia and later entered the civil service.
While working as a civil servant, Stephenson began writing theatrical pieces. His grandfather, General B. C. Stephenson, had lived and died at a house in Bolton Row, Mayfair
Mayfair
Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...
, and the young Stephenson adopted "Bolton Rowe" as his pen name. Stephenson's first works were collaborations with the composer Frederic Clay
Frederic Clay
Frederic Emes Clay was an English composer known principally for his music written for the stage. Clay, a great friend of Arthur Sullivan's, wrote four comic operas with W. S...
in three pieces played by amateurs, The Pirate's Isle, Out of Sight and The Bold Recruit (1868). The last of these was repeated at a benefit, produced by Thomas German Reed
Thomas German Reed
Thomas German Reed was an English composer and theatrical manager best known for creating the German Reed Entertainments, a genre of musical plays that made theatre-going respectable at a time when the stage was considered disreputable...
, at the Gallery of Illustration in 1870 as a companion piece to Clay and W.S. Gilbert's Ages Ago
Ages Ago
Ages Ago is a musical entertainment with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Frederic Clay that premiered on 22 November 1869 at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. It marked the beginning of a seven year long collaboration between the two. The piece was revived many times, including at St...
. Stephenson's first professional success came at the same venue, two years later, with a short operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
, written with the composer Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier was an English composer, orchestrator and conductor.In addition to conducting and music directing the original productions of several of the most famous Gilbert and Sullivan works and writing the overtures to some of them, Cellier conducted at many theatres in London, New York and...
, Charity Begins at Home. The piece was in the company's repertory for most of 1872, and was played more than 200 times.
Stephenson was still using the pseudonym "Bolton Rowe" when he wrote the libretto for Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
's one-act comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
The Zoo
The Zoo
The Zoo is a one-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson, writing under the pen name of Bolton Rowe. It premiered on 5 June 1875 at the St. James's Theatre in London , concluding its run five weeks later, on 9 July 1875, at the Haymarket Theatre...
in 1875. This work is still played today with some frequency. He then began a writing partnership with Clement Scott
Clement Scott
Clement Scott was an influential English theatre critic for the Daily Telegraph, and a playwright and travel writer, in the final decades of the 19th century...
, who adopted the matching pen name, "Saville Rowe" (after Savile Row
Savile Row
Savile Row is a shopping street in Mayfair, central London, famous for its traditional men's bespoke tailoring. The term "bespoke" is understood to have originated in Savile Row when cloth for a suit was said to "be spoken for" by individual customers...
, another Mayfair street). Together, for the Bancrofts
Squire Bancroft
Sir Squire Bancroft , born Squire White Butterfield, was an English actor-manager. He and his wife Effie Bancroft are considered to have instigated a new form of drama known as 'drawing-room comedy' or 'cup and saucer drama', owing to the realism of their stage sets.-Early life and career:Bancroft...
at the Prince of Wales's Theatre
Scala Theatre
The Scala Theatre was a theatre in London, sited on Charlotte Street, off Tottenham Court Road, in the London Borough of Camden. The first theatre on the site opened in 1772, and the theatre was demolished in 1969, after being destroyed by fire...
, they wrote English versions of Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...
's plays, Nos intimes (as Peril) and Dora (1878 as Diplomacy). The latter was described by the theatrical paper The Era
The Era (newspaper)
The Era was a British weekly paper, published from 1838 to 1939. Originally a general newspaper, it became noted for its sports coverage, and later for its theatrical content.-History:...
as "the great dramatic hit of the season". It also played with success at Wallack's Theatre
Wallack's Theatre
Wallack’s Theatre , located on 254 West 42nd Street in New York, United States, was opened on December 5, 1904 by Oscar Hammerstein I. Wallack’s was Hammerstein’s 8th production theatre and was originally known as the "Lew Fields'", a name that Hammerstein gave it in recognition of his favourite...
in New York. Stephenson and Scott wrote an English version of Halévy
Ludovic Halévy
Ludovic Halévy was a French author and playwright. He was half Jewish : his Jewish father had converted to Christianity prior to his birth, to marry his mother, née Alexandrine Lebas.-Biography:Ludovic Halévy was born in Paris...
and Meilhac
Henri Meilhac
Henri Meilhac , was a French dramatist and opera librettist.-Biography:Meilhac was born in Paris in 1831. As a young man, he began writing fanciful articles for Parisian newspapers and vaudevilles, in a vivacious boulevardier spirit which brought him to the forefront...
's libretto for Lecocq's operette, Le Petit Duc. Their adaptation so pleased the composer that he volunteered to write some new music for the English production.
West End and Broadway success
In 1880, Stephenson's work again featured in New York. The reopened Broadway Opera House was inaugurated with a double bill of Ages Ago and Charity Begins at Home. Stephenson also supplied the libretto for a three-act grand operaGrand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...
version of Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
's The Masque of Pandora, composed by Alfred Cellier, and presented in Boston in 1881. The next year in London, Stephenson collaborated with Brandon Thomas
Brandon Thomas
Walter Brandon Thomas was an English actor, playwright and song writer, best known as the author of the farce Charley's Aunt....
on a "new and critical comedy", Comrades, for the Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre...
, with a cast including Arthur Cecil
Arthur Cecil
Arthur Cecil Blunt, better known as Arthur Cecil was an English actor, comedian, playwright and theatre manager. He is probably best remembered for playing the role of Box in the long-running production of Cox and Box, by Arthur Sullivan and F. C...
, D. G. Boucicault
Dion Boucicault Jr.
Dion Boucicault Jr. was an actor and stage director. Son of the well-known playwright, Dion Boucicault, he followed his father into the theatrical profession and made a career as a character actor and a director...
and Marion Terry
Marion Terry
Marion Bessie Terry was an English actress. In a career spanning half a century, she played leading roles in more than 125 plays. Always in the shadow of her more famous sister Ellen, Terry nevertheless achieved considerable success in the plays of W. S...
. Writing under his real name for the first time, Stephenson had a great success in 1882–83 with his play Impulse, which opened in December 1882 and ran through most of the next year. In 1886, he adapted Der Probenfeil by Oscar Blumenthal
Oscar Blumenthal
Oscar Blumenthal or Oskar Blumenthal was a German playwright and drama critic.-Biography:...
as A Woman of the World, which was staged at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
, starring Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
and Helen Barry
Helen Barry
Helen Barry was an English actress and singer.-External links:*...
.
In 1886 Stephenson had his greatest success. He and Cellier wrote the comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
Dorothy
Dorothy (opera)
Dorothy is a comic opera in three acts with music by Alfred Cellier and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson. The story involves a rake who falls in love with his disguised fiancée.It was first produced at the Gaiety Theatre in London on in 1886...
. The piece opened at the Gaiety Theatre
Gaiety Theatre, London
The Gaiety Theatre, London was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was established as the Strand Musick Hall , in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. It was rebuilt several times, but closed from the beginning of World War II...
on 25 September 1886, receiving lukewarm notices. Much of Cellier's score was reused material from an earlier failure, and neither the music nor the libretto attracted critical praise. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
wrote, "Gentility reigns supreme, and with it unfortunately also a good deal of the refined feebleness and the ineptitude which are the defects of that quality." Stephenson and Cellier revised the work, and it transferred in December to the Prince of Wales Theatre
Prince of Wales Theatre
The Prince of Wales Theatre is a West End theatre on Coventry Street, near Leicester Square in the City of Westminster. It was established in 1884 and rebuilt in 1937, and extensively refurbished in 2004 by Sir Cameron Mackintosh, its current owner...
with new stars, including Marie Tempest
Marie Tempest
Dame Marie Tempest DBE was an English singer and actress known as the "queen of her profession".Tempest became the most famous soprano in late Victorian light opera and Edwardian musical comedies. Later, she became a leading comic actress and toured widely in North America and elsewhere...
. Dorothy became a great success at the box office and transferred in 1887 to the Lyric Theatre
Lyric Theatre (London)
The Lyric Theatre is a West End theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster.Designed by architect C. J. Phipps, it was built by producer Henry Leslie with profits from the Alfred Cellier and B. C. Stephenson hit, Dorothy, which he transferred from the Prince of Wales Theatre to open...
, where it ran until 1889. Its initial run of a total of 931 performances was the longest of any piece of musical theatre up to that time. Some critics reconsidered their earlier condemnation, the work became regarded as a classic Victorian piece, and the initially despised plot was traced seriously back to the Restoration playwrights David Garrick
David Garrick
David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
and Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first English professional female writers. Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature.-Early life:...
, and to Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
and even Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
. Stephenson and Cellier later collaborated on another comic opera, Doris
Doris (opera)
Doris is a "comedy opera" in three acts by Alfred Cellier, with a libretto by B. C. Stephenson. After the phenomenal success of Cellier and Stephenson's Dorothy , the pair were hoping for another big hit. Doris turned out to be only modestly successful.It opened at the Lyric Theatre in London on...
(1888), which, without rivalling Dorothy, had a good run of more than 200 performances.
Stephenson's later work in musical theatre was less successful. For the Carl Rosa Opera Company
Carl Rosa Opera Company
The Carl Rosa Opera Company was founded in 1873 by Carl August Nicholas Rosa, a German-born musical impresario, to present opera in English in London and the British provinces. The company survived Rosa's death in 1889, and continued to present opera in English on tour until 1960, when it was...
he rewrote the libretto for The Golden Web, an opera bouffe
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....
by the composer Arthur Goring Thomas
Arthur Goring Thomas
Arthur Goring Thomas was an English composer. He was the youngest son of Freeman Thomas and Amelia, daughter of Colonel Thomas Frederick.He was born at Ratton Park, Sussex, and educated at Haileybury College...
, which was first heard in 1893. In spite of some positive critical attention, interest in the piece was short-lived. The same year, two short operettas with music by Edward Jakobowski
Edward Jakobowski
Edward Jakobowski was an English composer best known for writing the comic opera Erminie. Jakobowski was a significant figure on the London musical stage during the last two decades of the 19th Century. He did not challenge Sullivan, nor quite equal Fred Clay or Alfred Cellier but his gift of...
, The Improvisatore and A Venetian Singer, made little impact. The Ranch, a musical farce with music by Edward Solomon
Edward Solomon
Edward Solomon was a prolific English composer, as well as a conductor, orchestrator and pianist. Though he died before his fortieth birthday, he wrote dozens of works produced for the stage, including several for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, such as The Nautch Girl, among others.-Early...
, failed to find a theatre to stage it. A libretto for Charles Villiers Stanford
Charles Villiers Stanford
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...
, Christopher Patch, The Barber of Bath, was set by Stanford but has never been performed. A libretto for Sir Alexander McKenzie
Alexander McKenzie
Alexander McKenzie was a United States Navy Boatswain's Mate who received the Medal of Honor during the Korean Expedition. He was wounded in the rescue of Lieutenant Hugh McKee and was struck by a sword.-Medal of Honor citation:...
remained, as McKenzie put it in 1898, "still in my desk".
Later years
In the non-musical theatre, Stephenson continued to prosper. By the 1890s he was sufficiently well-known that his name as author of a play lent cachet. In 1892 one British newspaper protested that a new play, advertised as the work of Stephenson and Augustus HarrisAugustus Harris
Sir Augustus Henry Glossop Harris , was a British actor, impresario, and dramatist.-Early life:Harris was born in Paris, France, the son of Augustus Glossop Harris , who was also a dramatist, and his wife, née Maria Ann Bone, a theatrical costumier...
, was in fact the work of less-known writers. In the same year, Stephenson produced one of his more enduring works, Faithful James, a one act comedy. It supplanted Gilbert's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Gilbert)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, A Tragic Episode, in Three Tabloids is a short comic play by W. S. Gilbert, a parody of Hamlet by William Shakespeare...
in a triple bill running at the Court Theatre. The cast included Weedon Grossmith
Weedon Grossmith
Walter Weedon Grossmith , better known as Weedon Grossmith, was an English writer, painter, actor and playwright, best known as co-author of The Diary of a Nobody with his famous brother, music hall comedian and Gilbert and Sullivan star, George Grossmith...
, Brandon Thomas, Ellaline Terriss
Ellaline Terriss
Ellaline Terriss, born Ellaline Lewin , was a popular English actress and singer, best known for her performances in Edwardian musical comedies...
and Sybil Grey
Sybil Grey
Sybil Grey was a British opera singer during the Victorian era best known for creating a series of minor roles in productions by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, including roles in several of the famous Gilbert and Sullivan operas, between 1880 to 1888...
. Among later revivals of the play was one in 1907 with Rutland Barrington
Rutland Barrington
Rutland Barrington was an English singer, actor, comedian, and Edwardian musical comedy star. Best remembered for originating the lyric baritone roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1877 to 1896, his performing career spanned more than four decades...
in the title role of the bumbling butler. In 1894, Stephenson co-wrote a melodrama with Haddon Chambers
Charles Haddon Chambers
Charles Haddon Spurgeon Chambers was an Australian-born dramatist, active in England.-Early life:Chambers was born in Petersham, Sydney, the son of John Ritchie Chambers, who had a good position in the New South Wales civil service, came from Ulster, his mother, Frances, daughter of William...
, The Fatal Card, which was well received. Asked how he and his collaborator worked together, he said, "We divide the labour. I write all the vowels and Mr Chambers all the consonants."
Among revivals of Stephenson's works, during his life and after, were Dorothy (on several occasions, notably in 1908, when the critic of The Times called it "one of the most tuneful, most charming, and most shapely of English comic operas") and Diplomacy, which was given in command performances for Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
in 1893 and George V
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
in 1914, and was revived again in 1924, starring Gladys Cooper
Gladys Cooper
Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, DBE was an English actress whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television....
.
Stephenson died in Taplow
Taplow
Taplow is a village and civil parish within South Bucks district in Buckinghamshire, England. It sits on the east bank of the River Thames facing Maidenhead on the opposite bank. Taplow railway station is situated near the A4 south of the village....
, Berkshire
Berkshire
Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...
, at the age of 66.