page_title: A Princess of Kensington
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: A Princess of Kensington / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: The principals in A Princess of Kensington
context_page_description: A Princess of Kensington is an English comic opera in two acts by Edward German to a libretto by Basil Hood, produced by William Greet. The first performance was at the Savoy Theatre, London, on 22 January 1903 and ran for 115 performances.
  The opera was the last new work produced by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy Theatre, and is therefore considered by some to be the last Savoy opera. The original cast included a number of the famous Savoyards, including Louie Pounds, Robert Evett, Walter Passmore, Henry Lytton, and Rosina Brandram. After the original run at the Savoy, the show toured. After that tour, the cast mostly joined the new musical, The Earl and the Girl.
  The piece was given a Broadway production from August to October 1903.
context_section_description: Following the successes of their earlier comic operas, The Emerald Isle and Merrie England, Basil Hood and Edward German collaborated once more. Despite a good reception from critics and Savoy opera devotees, the opera achieved a run of only 115 performances, owing partly to its dense plot and unwieldy libretto, and partly to the continued decline of comic operas in favour of George Edwardes-style musical comedies as the London theatregoing public's choice entertainment.
  Despite its relative failure compared to the other Savoy operas, A Princess of Kensington became popular enough to be one of the first operas to have original cast recordings of selections made during the original run.  The recordings themselves were popular enough that a 1907 silent film of one of the songs, "Four Jolly Sailor Boys" [sic], was produced to be played synchronized to the recording.
  The fairy backstory of the plot is derived from a poem by Thomas Tickell entitled Kensington Garden, featuring the history of the characters Albion, Azuriel, Kenna, and Oberon.
caption: Postcard, 1903
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