MADAME BUTTERFLY
Madame Butterfly represents the spirit of romance which has never been entirely absent from our stage and which seems to be in process of revival. It represents also the dramatic ability of Mr. David Belasco working with the material furnished by the imagination of Mr. John Luther Long.
David Belasco was born in San Francisco, July 25, 1853. Even before he left school in the early seventies his mind was on the theatre, and during the next few years he was callboy, actor, stage manager, adaptor, and writer of plays. Mr. Belasco wrote or adapted twenty-two plays during his career in California, beginning with A Christmas Night, in which he acted in the Geary Street Hall, San Francisco, and including his share in The Moonlight Marriage and Hearts of Oak, in which he collaborated with James A. Heme. La Belle Busse, which he put on first at the Baldwin Theatre, San Francisco, of which he was stage manager, attracted the attention of Eastern managers and was produced by Lester Wallack at his theatre, May 8, 1882. Shortly afterward Mr. Belasco became stage manager of the Madison Square Theatre in New York where his play, May Blossom, was produced April 12, 1884. After assisting Bronson Howard in Baron Rudolph in 1887, he became associated with Henry C. DeMille in the writing of a number of plays, all well constructed and entertaining, if at times verging on the sentimental and melodramatic. Of these The Wife was produced November 1, 1887, Lord Chumley, in which Mr. E. H. Sothern starred, on August 21, 1888, and The Charity Ball, November 19, 1889, all at the Lyceum Theatre, and all associated with the sterling group of players then gathered together there. Men and Women, also with DeMille, was produced at Proctor's Theatre, October 21, 1890. His next significant play was The Girl I Left Behind Me, with Mr. Franklin Fyles, produced at the Empire Theatre, January 25, 1893, and having its initial performance at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, January 6, 1893. The Heart of Maryland, in which Mrs. Leslie Carter starred at the Herald Square Theatre on October 22, 1895, represents the emotional melodrama of a popular kind, and DuBarry, played at the National Theatre in Washington, December 12, 1901, the melodrama based on historical material.
The next period of his work, and probably the most artistic, was that in which he was associated with Mr. John Luther Long in the field of exotic romance. On March 5, 1900, at the Herald Square Theatre, Mr. Belasco produced his dramatization of Mr. Long's story of Madame Butterfly, in a combination bill with his farce of Naughty Anthony, originally performed on
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