Light Opera of Manhattan
Encyclopedia
Light Opera of Manhattan, known as LOOM, was an Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 repertory
Repertory
Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...

 theatre company that produced light operas, including the works of Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

 and European and American 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:...

s, 52 weeks per year, in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 between 1968 and 1989.

Founded by William Mount-Burke, LOOM's first long-term home was in the Jan Hus theatre from the late 1960s to 1975, where it succeeded another small light opera company, the American Savoyards
American Savoyards
American Savoyards was an Off-Broadway and touring repertory theatre company that produced light operas, principally the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, in New York City between 1948 and 1967.-Beginnings:...

. At the Jan Hus, LOOM performed predominantly the Savoy opera
Savoy opera
The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...

s of Gilbert and Sullivan, such as The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...

, The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...

and H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...

. Led by conductor-director Mount-Burke, principal comedian Raymond Allen
Raymond Allen (stage actor)
Raymond Allen was an American stage actor who was best-known for his performances in Gilbert and Sullivan and other light operas from the 1950s through the 1980s. He spent most of his career with the American Savoyards and later the Light Opera of Manhattan.-Biography:Allen was born and raised in...

 and choreographer Jerry Gotham, the company mentored many young actors and singers who went on to careers on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 or elsewhere in theatre or music.

In 1975, the company moved across the street to a legitimate Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 theatre, the Eastside Playhouse. There it expanded its repertoire beyond Gilbert and Sullivan to American and continental 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:...

s, such as those of Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...

, Rudolph Friml, Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár was an Austrian-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow .-Biography:...

, Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...

, Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

 and Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...

. LOOM was often featured on WQXR
WQXR-FM
WQXR-FM is an American classical radio station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, and serving the New York City metropolitan area. It is the most-listened-to classical-music station in the United States, with an average quarter-hour audience of 63,000...

 radio.

By 1979, diabetes had blinded William Mount-Burke, but he continued to conduct and even to direct new productions. The company remained strong until 1984, when Mount-Burke died and the company's playhouse was closed and subsequently demolished. After this, led by Allen and Gotham, with music director Todd Ellison, the company played in a series of theatres around New York that challenged its ability to keep its Upper East Side
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, between Central Park and the East River. The Upper East Side lies within an area bounded by 59th Street to 96th Street, and the East River to Fifth Avenue-Central Park...

 audience, and it was forced constantly to raise funds. In 1986, the company closed, opening for its final seasons from 1987 to 1989.

Beginning years at the Jan Hus

In the fall of 1968, William Mount-Burke (1936–1984), the former director of The Miami Light Opera and The Stamford Symphony, took steps to start an Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 company specializing in 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...

s of Gilbert and Sullivan. He first presented a free showcase performance of The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...

at his apartment in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. The success of this performance encouraged Mount-Burke to move forward with his plan. Mount-Burke formed a non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

, The Light Opera of Manhattan, which came to be known as LOOM. The producer and his company next offered a number of free performances at St. Michael's Church
St. Michael's Church, New York City
St. Michael's Church is a historic Episcopal church at 225 W. 99th Street in New York City. It was founded in January 1807; the present Romanesque building was built in 1890 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996....

 on East 99th Street in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

. In 1969, LOOM moved into the basement gymnasium of The Jan Hus House on East 74th Street, previously the home of Dorothy Raedler's American Savoyards
American Savoyards
American Savoyards was an Off-Broadway and touring repertory theatre company that produced light operas, principally the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, in New York City between 1948 and 1967.-Beginnings:...

, intending to play a limited engagement. However, the company stayed at the Jan Hus for almost seven years, performing predominantly the Savoy opera
Savoy opera
The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...

s of Gilbert and Sullivan, such as Pirates, The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...

and H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...

.

Raymond Allen
Raymond Allen (stage actor)
Raymond Allen was an American stage actor who was best-known for his performances in Gilbert and Sullivan and other light operas from the 1950s through the 1980s. He spent most of his career with the American Savoyards and later the Light Opera of Manhattan.-Biography:Allen was born and raised in...

, who had previously sung with the American Savoyards and made guest appearances at New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...

 and the City Center Gilbert & Sullivan Company, was the leading comic actor for most of the company's performances. Allen wrote an introduction to The Best of Gilbert & Sullivan: 42 Favorite Songs from the G&S Repertoire, a songbook published by Chappell Music Company
Chappell & Co.
Chappell & Co. was an English company that published music and manufactured pianos.-History:It was founded in 1810 by Samuel Chappell in partnership with music professors Francis Tatton Latour and Johann Baptist Cramer. Cramer was also a well-known London composer, teacher and pianist...

 in 1974. The book includes many photographs of LOOM productions and states that LOOM's year-round performing season was the longest of any company in the United States.

Under LOOM's Equity
Actors' Equity Association
The Actors' Equity Association , commonly referred to as Actors' Equity or simply Equity, is an American labor union representing the world of live theatrical performance, as opposed to film and television performance. However, performers appearing on live stage productions without a book or...

 union contract, casting consisted of seven union principals and over twenty non-union actors who could receive their Equity membership after an apprenticeship with the company. This arrangement was unique among full-time theatre companies in New York. The pay for the non-union actors was nominal, but many young actor/singers who aspired to be full-time professionals were able to receive training and could work their way up from the ensemble to featured roles in the course of a year.

Many future New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...

 and Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 professionals started out at LOOM, including writer/director Gerard Alessandrini
Gerard Alessandrini
Gerard Alessandrini is an American playwright, parodist, actor and theatre director best known for creating the award-winning off-Broadway musical theatre parody revue Forbidden Broadway...

 of Forbidden Broadway
Forbidden Broadway
Forbidden Broadway is an Off-Broadway satirical revue conceived, written and directed by Gerard Alessandrini. The original version of the revue opened on January 15, 1982 at Palsson's Supper Club in New York City and ran for 2,332 performances. Alessandrini has rewritten the show over a dozen...

; Craig Schulman of Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....

. Robert Cuccioli
Robert Cuccioli
Robert Cuccioli is an American actor and singer born in Hempstead, New York. He is best known for originating the lead dual title roles in the musical Jekyll and Hyde, for which he received a Tony Award nomination and won the Joseph Jefferson Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk...

 of Jekyll & Hyde
Jekyll & Hyde (musical)
Jekyll & Hyde is a musical based on the novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The original stage conception was by Steve Cuden and Frank Wildhorn. The music is by Wildhorn and the lyrics and book are by Leslie Bricusse.The musical ran on Broadway for 1,543...

; Stephen O'Mara, opera singer; Penny Orloff, City Opera and broadway performer; Carolyne Mas, recording artist; Michael Connolly of Annie
Annie (musical)
Annie is a Broadway musical based upon the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie, with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and the book by Thomas Meehan. The original Broadway production opened in 1977 and ran for nearly six years with a blonde Annie as the poster...

, Amadeus
Amadeus
Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer.It is based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, highly fictionalized.Amadeus was first performed in 1979...

and others; Larry Raiken (now a Professor at Hartt College, who appeared in Woman of the Year
Woman of the Year (musical)
Woman of the Year is a musical with a book by Peter Stone and score by John Kander and Fred Ebb.Based on the Ring Lardner Jr.-Michael Kanin screenplay for the 1942 Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy film of the same name, the musical changes the newspaper reporters of the original to television...

, Baby, Big River
Big River (musical)
Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a musical with a book by William Hauptman and music and lyrics by Roger Miller.Based on Mark Twain's classic 1884 novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it features music in the bluegrass and country styles in keeping with the setting of the novel...

, Sheik of Avenue B, Can-Can
Can-Can (musical)
Can-Can is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, and a book by Abe Burrows. The story concerns the showgirls of the Montmartre dance halls during the 1890s....

, How to Succeed..., and Follies
Follies
Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...

, among others); and Joan Lader, voice teacher whose pupils have included Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...

, Patti LuPone
Patti LuPone
Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...

, Roberta Flack
Roberta Flack
Roberta Flack is an American singer, songwriter, and musician who is notable for jazz, soul, R&B, and folk music...

, Tonya Pinkins
Tonya Pinkins
Tonya Pinkins is an American actress and author known for her portrayal of Livia Frye on the soap opera All My Children and for her roles on Broadway, for which she won a Tony Award.-Biography:...

 and others. Macaulay Culkin
Macaulay Culkin
Macaulay Carson Culkin is an American actor. He became widely known for his portrayal of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. He is also known for his roles in Richie Rich, Uncle Buck, My Girl, The Pagemaster, and Party Monster...

 played Tom Tucker (the juvenile "midshipmite") in H.M.S. Pinafore.

LOOM initially bought a number of its costumes and stage properties from Dorothy Raedler's American Savoyards. It designed its own sets and other costumes, seeking to achieve a professional appearance on a small budget. Choreographer/stage manager Jerry Gotham (a former Broadway dancer) made much of the limited space and resources. The orchestra consisted of two players: pianist Brian Molloy, a graduate of Juilliard, who played every score by heart, and Mount-Burke himself, covering the organ and timpani, while conducting the performance.

Moving up to the Eastside Playhouse

In 1975, the company moved out of the Jan Hus to the legitimate Off-Broadway Eastside Playhouse, just across E. 74th Street. This 284-seat house was still intimate, but the company could generate substantially more revenues than it could in the Jan Hus basement. In addition, the theatre had better stage facilities, good seating, stage lighting
Stage lighting
Modern stage lighting is a flexible tool in the production of theatre, dance, opera and other performance arts. Several different types of stage lighting instruments are used in the pursuit of the various principles or goals of lighting. Stage lighting has grown considerably in recent years...

 and a balcony. All the sight-lines were good, whereas in the Jan Hus there were vertical poles interfering with some views. At Jan Hus, the company's staging had been designed to refer to the positions of these poles, and even after the company moved to the Eastside Playhouse, Gotham taught the staging of the (by this time) two dozen shows in the repertory by reference to the imaginary positions of the poles, as they had existed at Jan Hus. While at the Eastside Playhouse, LOOM published a music book containing an introduction by Raymond Allen
Raymond Allen (stage actor)
Raymond Allen was an American stage actor who was best-known for his performances in Gilbert and Sullivan and other light operas from the 1950s through the 1980s. He spent most of his career with the American Savoyards and later the Light Opera of Manhattan.-Biography:Allen was born and raised in...

 and many photographs of the company in its Gilbert and Sullivan productions.

Beginning in 1975 and through the 1980s, LOOM added American and continental 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:...

s to its roster, eventually carrying over 30 shows in its repertory. Its first non-G&S show was Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...

's Naughty Marietta
Naughty Marietta (operetta)
Naughty Marietta is an operetta in two acts, with libretto by Rida Johnson Young and music by Victor Herbert. Set in New Orleans in 1780, it tells how Captain Richard Warrington is commissioned to unmask and capture a notorious French pirate calling himself "Bras Priqué" – and how he is helped and...

, with guest artist Joan Sena-Grande in the title role, in 1975. Larry Raiken played Captain Dick Warrington. The next operetta with a guest star was Rudolph Friml's 1925 hit, The Vagabond King
The Vagabond King
The Vagabond King is a 1925 operetta by Rudolf Friml in four acts, with a book and lyrics by Brian Hooker and William H. Post, based upon Justin Huntly McCarthy's 1901 romantic play If I Were King...

, with Broadway veteran Jeanne Beauvais as Huguette.

In the mid-1970s, the company asked Alice Hammerstein Mathias (Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

's daughter) to create a new translation of Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár was an Austrian-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow .-Biography:...

's The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...

. The translation is lighter and focuses more on the humorous aspects of the show than some of the standard translations. With Jeanne Bouvais again in the lead, The Merry Widow was a success that increased LOOM's audiences and received positive reviews. Friml's The Vagabond King and Rose-Marie
Rose-Marie
Rose-Marie is an operetta-style musical with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, and book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. The story takes place in the Canadian Rockies and concerns Rose-Marie La Flemme, a French Canadian girl who loves miner Jim Kenyon...

; Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...

's The Student Prince
The Student Prince
The Student Prince is an operetta in four acts with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly. It is based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Alt Heidelberg. The piece has elements of melodrama but lacks the swashbuckling style common to Romberg's other works...

, The Desert Song
The Desert Song
The Desert Song is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. It was inspired by the 1925 uprising of the Riffs, a group of Moroccan fighters, against French colonial rule. It was also inspired by stories of Lawrence of...

, The New Moon
The New Moon
The New Moon is the name of an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Frank Mandel, and Laurence Schwab. The show was the third and last in a string of Broadway hits for Romberg written in the style of Viennese operetta...

; Herbert's Naughty Marietta, The Red Mill
The Red Mill
The Red Mill is an operetta written by Victor Herbert, with a libretto by Henry Blossom. It premiered on Broadway on September 24, 1906 at the Knickerbocker Theatre and ran for 274 performances, starring comedians Fred Stone and David Montgomery. It was revived on October 16, 1945, opening at the...

, Mlle. Modiste
Mlle. Modiste
Mlle. Modiste is an operetta in two acts written by Victor Herbert, libretto by Henry Blossom. It concerns hat shop girl Fifi, who longs to be an opera singer, but who is such a good hat seller that her employer, Mme. Cecil discourages her in her ambitions and exploits her commercial talents...

and The Fortune Teller
The Fortune Teller (operetta)
The Fortune Teller is an operetta in three acts written by Victor Herbert, with a libretto by Harry B. Smith. After a brief tryout in Toronto, it premiered on Broadway on September 26, 1898 at Wallack's Theatre and ran for 40 performances...

; Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

's The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein; and Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...

's A Night in Venice, and others became favorites of the company. The Student Prince and Mlle. Modiste became showcases for Georgia McEver, LOOM's leading soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 for several seasons.

Alice Hammerstein Mathias was then asked to prepare a new book and lyrics for Victor Herbert's Babes In Toyland
Babes in Toyland (operetta)
Babes in Toyland is an operetta composed by Victor Herbert with a libretto by Glen MacDonough , which wove together various characters from Mother Goose nursery rhymes into a Christmas-themed musical extravaganza. The creators wanted to cash in on the extraordinary success of The Wizard of Oz,...

, which had not been given a professional New York production in many years. Her original story centered on two unhappy children who run away to Toyland but are eventually reconciled with their parents. Children were invited onstage from the audience to "wind up" the choristers who played toys in the "March of the Wooden Soldiers." Babes was a perennial hit for LOOM, offering parents an alternative to Radio City
Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...

's annual Christmas show, and Victor Herbert's beloved tunes delighted older audience members. LOOM played Babes in Toyland each year from Thanksgiving through New Year's.

In the 1970s, LOOM also presented a series of September concerts at the Naumburg Bandshell, in Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...

, which were broadcast live over WNYC
WNYC
WNYC is a set of call letters shared by a pair of co-owned, non-profit, public radio stations located in New York City.WNYC broadcasts on the AM band at 820 kHz, and WNYC-FM is at 93.9 MHz. Both stations are members of National Public Radio and carry distinct, but similar news/talk programs...

 radio. The company was also featured on NBC's Today program, as well as numerous times on WQXR
WQXR-FM
WQXR-FM is an American classical radio station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, and serving the New York City metropolitan area. It is the most-listened-to classical-music station in the United States, with an average quarter-hour audience of 63,000...

's The Listening Room.

The Festival Year and bright hopes

In At the end of its tenth year (1978–79), in the summer of 1979, LOOM staged all 13 extant works of Gilbert and Sullivan consecutively in a "festival" season, one opera per week. It was the first company in the world to attempt this schedule (the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was a professional light opera company that staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. The company performed nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere, from the 1870s until it closed in 1982. It was revived in 1988 and...

 had played all 13 operas consecutively in its 1975 centenary season, but The Grand Duke
The Grand Duke
The Grand Duke; or, The Statutory Duel, is the final Savoy Opera written by librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, their fourteenth and last opera together. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on March 7, 1896, and ran for 123 performances...

was only a concert performance). In the last two of these weeks, Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke, Gilbert and Sullivan's last two G&S operas, were given rare New York professional revivals, although the American Savoyards had performed them two decades earlier, and LOOM had also introduced them before this season. Both shows played strongly and were given more extended runs the following season. During "The Festival Year", student tickets were available for $4.00. However, the strain of rehearsing and mounting a new production every week for so many weeks in a row took its toll on the cast.

Enjoying good ticket sales and hoping to ensure its future, LOOM sought to raise funds to purchase the Eastside Playhouse. However, by 1979, diabetes had blinded William Mount-Burke. He nevertheless continued to conduct performances from memory, to plan LOOM's future, and even to stage new shows after losing his sight completely. For example, in 1980, Mount-Burke directed the first professional production of 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...

 and B. C. Stephenson
B. C. Stephenson
Benjamin Charles Stephenson or B. C. Stephenson was an English dramatist, lyricist and librettist. After beginning a career in the civil service, he started to write for the theatre, using the pen name "Bolton Rowe". He was author or co-author of several long-running shows of the Victorian theatre...

's 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...

given anywhere in the world since 1879. These seasons, despite Mount-Burke's declining health, may have been LOOM's best, with the company attracting high-quality professional singers for their casts, generally improved costumes and sets, good reviews and a seemingly secure financial future. The New York Times wrote, in its preview of LOOM's 1981 spring season, "The three works (Pinafore, Pirates and The Mikado) ...will be done in the best Savoyard tradition. Do not expect a fully mounted D'Oyly Carte theatrical version.... Expect, however, to hear some fine voices and to be entertained."

This period in the company's history is lampooned in the 2003 comic novel, Jewish Thighs on Broadway: Misadventures of a Little Trouper by Penny Orloff, who played Josephine in Pinafore, Mabel in Pirates, and the title role in Iolanthe
Iolanthe
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....

in the summer of 1980.

After Mount-Burke's death

Mount-Burke finally succumbed to his diabetes in 1984. Gotham and Allen took over as joint artistic directors to oversee the productions, and assistant music director Todd Ellison was promoted to music director. Jean Dalrymple
Jean Dalrymple
Jean Dalrymple was an American theater producer, manager, publicist, author and playwright who was instrumental in the founding of New York City Center and is best known for her productions there.-Biography:...

, a producer of City Center
New York City Center
New York City Center is a 2,750-seat Moorish Revival theater located at 131 West 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues in Manhattan, New York City. It is one block south of Carnegie Hall...

's musical theatre
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 revivals in the 1950s, who had been involved for many years in fundraising for the company, became president of LOOM and produced the shows, which continued uninterrupted, 52 weeks per year. But the company almost immediately ran into a number of misfortunes and costs, perhaps most importantly the loss of the Eastside Playhouse. The Building was scheduled to be demolished to make way for an apartment building, and LOOM was forced to leave.

LOOM transferred first to The Norman Thomas High School Auditorium, which was too large for its intimate productions and too distant from the Upper East Side
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, between Central Park and the East River. The Upper East Side lies within an area bounded by 59th Street to 96th Street, and the East River to Fifth Avenue-Central Park...

 neighborhood where it had built its reputation. Its reduced audiences were dwarfed by the large auditiorium. Next, from February 1985 to October 1986, LOOM performed at the Cherry Lane Theatre
Cherry Lane Theatre
The Cherry Lane Theatre , located at 38 Commerce Street in the borough of Manhattan, was New York City's oldest, continuously running off-Broadway theater...

 in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

, but this black box theatre was too small. Although the company's ticket sales improved there, even sellout crowds were insufficient to generate sufficient revenues to stay ahead of the expenses of paying the large casts needed for light opera. Nevertheless, LOOM continued to introduce new productions, including Herbert's Sweethearts and William H. Smith's The Drunkard. Despite constant fundraising, LOOM fell further into debt and ceased performing in October 1986 with a matinee of The Vagabond King.

After more fundraising, Jean Dalrymple brought the company back together in 1987, and LOOM resumed its full-time production schedule at the 299-seat Playhouse 91, returning to the Upper East Side. The artistic team created an adaptation of George M. Cohan
George M. Cohan
George Michael Cohan , known professionally as George M. Cohan, was a major American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and producer....

's Little Johnny Jones
Little Johnny Jones
For the blues pianist, see Little Johnny Jones Little Johnny Jones is a musical by George M. Cohan. The show introduced Cohan's tunes "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy." The "Yankee Doodle" character was inspired by real-life Hall of Fame jockey Tod Sloan.-Background:The...

, called Give My Regards to Broadway. The show involved more tap dancing than any other show Off-Broadway and revived the company's popularity. Despite good box office performance, the company continued to suffer from debts and old tax problems. LOOM closed permanently in August 1989, with a run of The Pirates of Penzance – the company's first opera in 1968. After 1989, there were discussions about trying to revive the company, and one or two brief New York City productions used the LOOM name, but they were not by the same company.

Raymond Allen died on January 29, 1994 in Queens, New York, ending any possibility of a LOOM revival.

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