Listen for Billy Murray saying (not singing) "No, I didn't" (twice!) in the middle of this performance.
September 30, 1914
The Victor Light Opera Company was active from mid-1909 into the 1930s. For a brief period, beginning in 1917, the word "Light" was dropped from the name and the Victor Opera Company recorded several grand opera selections.
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).
