Walter Slaughter
Walter Alfred Slaughter (17 February 1860 – 2 March 1908) was an English conductor and composer of
Life and career
Youth and education
Slaughter was born in
Early career
Slaughter served as the organist at St. Andrew's and as a cellist and pianist in music halls prior to becoming a musical director in West End theatre productions. Before he was 20, he had composed three ballets for the South London Palace. His early works also included some individual songs, one of which was the popular "The Dear Homeland". He composed the music for the successful all-women one-act opera di camera An Adamless Eden (1882 at the Opera Comique),[5] which was produced in Britain and in America (1884) by Lila Clay's ladies' company. He also provided additional music in 1883, for the English adaptation of Edmond Audran's Gillette de Narbonne.[6] After several one-act works, including Sly and Shy (1883), The Casting Vote (1885)[7] and Marie's Honeymoon (1885), he wrote the score for what became the most successful musical version of Alice in Wonderland, in 1886, to a book and lyrics by Henry Savile Clarke. He also wrote a work called Sappho that year for the Opera Comique, which was not as well received because of a weak libretto.[8]
Slaughter later wrote the score to the medieval
Peak years
Slaughter's breakthrough success came in 1895 in collaboration with Hood with the musical comedy
Also with Hood, Slaughter wrote a farcical musical comedy, Dandy Dan the Lifeguardsman (1897, Lyric Theatre), another successful vehicle for Roberts, and Orlando Dando, The Volunteer (1898), a similar success for Dan Leno at the Fulham Grand Theatre and then on tour. Next, Slaughter wrote three shows for the Vaudeville Theatre managed by Seymour Hicks. The most successful of these was Bluebell in Fairyland (1901), produced by Charles Frohman and starring Hicks and his wife, Ellaline Terriss. This turned out to be the most popular Christmas entertainment of its time and was continually revived for the next four decades. Other 1901 works were Little Miss Modesty and The English Rose. An English Daisy, written with Hicks, was produced on Broadway with a Kingston run in 1902.
Slaughter wrote several more shows, including Little Hans Andersen with Hood (1903) and The Hooligan Band with Charles H. Taylor (1906). He also served as the first musical director for Oswald Stoll at the London Coliseum from 1904 to 1906.[2]
He died in London in 1908 at the age of 48.
Notes
- ^ a b The Musical Herald, 1 December 1906, p. 359
- ^ The Musical Herald, 1 April 1908, p. 105
- ^ The Strand Magazine, 4 July 1892, p. 85
- ^ Obituary, Cremona, March 1908, p. 35
- ^ The Times, 14 December 1882, p. 5
- ^ "The Royalty", The Era, 24 November 1883, p. 6; "Royalty Theatre", The Daily News, 21 November 1883, p. 6; and "A New Comic Opera", The Pall Mall Gazette, 21 November 1883, p. 4
- ^ The Times, 8 October 1885, p. 7
- ^ The Times, 12 February 1886, p. 13
- ^ The Times, 22 December 1893, p. 11
- ^ The Saturday Review, 9 March 1895, p. 315
- ^ "Terry's Theatre", The Times, 24 December 1897, p. 6
- ^ "'The Happy Life,' by Louis N. Parker, to be Produced at the Duke of York's Theatre", The New York Times, December 5, 1897