Frederick Solomon

Frederick Charles Solomon (31 August 1853 – 9 September 1924), known variously as Fred Solomon or Frederic Solomon, was a British-born American composer, conductor, actor, librettist, playwright, theatre director, and multi-instrumentalist whose career in American theatre spanned more than three decades. Born in London, he was one of eleven children of Charles and Cesira Solomon, whose father worked as a music hall pianist, conductor, arranger, and composer. Solomon grew up performing in music hall productions alongside his younger brother, the composer Edward Solomon, born two years after him. As a child he also appeared as a featured vocalist in Christmas pantomimes at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Solomon pursued formal musical training at the School of Military Music in Chatham, Kent, and subsequently served in the Royal Marine Band at Chatham, for which he received the Queen Victoria Silver Medal. He was additionally active as a cornetist and drummer in a London orchestra led by W. C. Levey. As a young adult he performed in touring theatre productions across London and the surrounding provinces. In 1881 he appeared in his brother's opera Billee Taylor at The Crystal Palace, and in 1883 toured the British provinces in the same work. That same year his own comic opera, Captain Kidd, or The Bold Buccaneer, premiered on 10 September 1883 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in Liverpool.

Solomon emigrated to the United States in 1885, making his American stage debut on 22 September of that year in Cleveland, Ohio, with Lillian Russell's theatre troupe. He portrayed Major General Bangs in his brother's comic opera Polly, or the Pet of the Regiment, with Edward Solomon conducting. By January 1886 he had left Russell's company to establish his own acting troupe, directing and starring in a touring production of the farce Inside Out that opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He subsequently rejoined Russell's company, playing Curaso in Pepita, or The Girl with the Glass Eye in Boston and New York City from March through May 1886, and remained with that company in Erminie, into which two of his original compositions, "The Love Bird" and "When Love Is Asleep," were interpolated.

After appearing on the New York stage as Reverend Thayer in his brother's The Maid and the Moonshiner, Solomon began a six-year period as a leading actor under Rudolph Aronson at the Casino Theatre, where he starred in long-running productions of Erminie, Poor Jonathan, The Brigands, and Nadjy. Concurrently he composed the music for the 1887 comic opera Pasquillo, or the Bottled Up Kingdom, with a libretto by A. K. Fulton, and wrote music for The Night Owl, a work that toured in vaudeville that same year. He married Mamie Sutten, a chorus girl at the Casino Theatre, in 1887; the couple had one son, William Frederick Solomon, born in 1888. The Casino staged his comic opera Yulee in 1888, with a libretto by Frank Dupree, later revived on Broadway in 1892 under the title King Kaliko. That same year the burlesque star May Howard toured in productions of his works The Roman Fete and Black Sheep. From 1889 to 1892 Solomon worked as a librettist and occasional composer for productions at Koster and Bial's Music Hall, and from 1892 to 1894 he toured with Pauline Hall's opera company in capacities ranging from performer to conductor and stage director. His most prominent success with that company was as the leading comic actor in Edgar Stillman Kelley's Puritania.

Following the death of his brother Edward in 1895, Solomon's career shifted increasingly toward composing and conducting. He staged the 1899 Broadway revivals of La Belle Hélène at the Casino Theatre and Ludwig Englander's In Gay Paree at the New York Theatre. In 1900 he appeared on Broadway in the musical The Belle of Bohemia and served as music director for The Cadet Girl at the Herald Square Theatre, the latter produced by the Shubert family and A. H. Chamberlyn. His most sustained Broadway work came through his association with the producers Klaw and Erlanger, for whom he wrote music and served as music director on a series of musicals adapted from fairytales and British pantomimes: The Sleeping Beauty and the Beast (1901), Mr. Bluebeard (1903), Mother Goose (1903), and Humpty Dumpty (1904), for which he also served as lyricist. He was additionally music director for the Klaw and Erlanger productions The Wild Rose (1902), A Little Bit of Everything (1904, also contributing as composer and lyricist), Lifting the Lid (1905), The White Cat (1905), Forty-five Minutes from Broadway (1906), and Oh! Oh! Delphine (1912). In 1908 he conducted for Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. as music director of the Ziegfeld Follies, and in 1920 he served as music director for the national tour of The Rainbow Girl.

Solomon died on 9 September 1924, in New York City, at the age of 71.