Shuberts ever have made as much money on any two other productions in their history as they did recently with "Blossom Time", an operetta fashioned around the life and music of Franz Schubert. Arthur Hammerstein's "Rose-Marie", another light opera, has run a year on Broadway now to capacity houses, and "The Student Prince", in one company of which I am playing, has been enormously profitable.
Light opera may or may not be back to stay. It will be the public's loss if it is not, but I walk warily in the paths of prophecy. I have a prediction, however, which I am prepared to shout from any housetop. That is that Gilbert and Sullivan will never die. They are to the English-speaking musical stage what Shakespeare is to the drama. The analogy is not strained.
Although I love these operas best and made my entry on to the singing stage when they were in their first furore, I never heard or sang in a Gilbert and Sullivan production until 1911, nearly thirty years later. I had been playing almost continuously for those three decades. Actors frequently are accused of having little or no interest in any play with which they have not been identified. The true explanation often
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