Ivan Caryll

Ivan Caryll was the pen name of Félix Marie Henri Tilkin, a Belgian-born composer of operettas and musical comedies who built successive careers in London and New York. Born on 12 May 1861 in Liège, Belgium, the son of an engineer named Henry Tilkin, Caryll studied at the Liège Conservatoire alongside fellow student Eugène Ysaÿe before moving to France to study singing at the Paris Conservatoire, where Rose Caron was among his classmates. He settled in London in 1882, initially earning a modest income giving music lessons in the suburbs before selling songs to producer George Edwardes, who eventually appointed him musical director of the Gaiety and Lyric Theatres. In that role, Caryll attempted to raise orchestral standards by eliminating the deputy system, which had allowed players to send substitutes when more lucrative engagements arose.

His first theatre piece, Lily of Léoville, appeared in 1886. Caryll sent the score to Camille Saint-Saëns, who used his influence to have it staged at the Bouffes Parisiens. Violet Melnotte secured the English rights, and the London production featured a young Hayden Coffin. That same year, Caryll contributed to Monte Cristo Jr., a burlesque for the Gaiety, and went on to compose a number of works for the Lyric Theatre, culminating in the successful Little Christopher Columbus in 1893. In 1890 he added numbers to the English-language version of La cigale et la fourmi. In 1892 he conducted W. S. Gilbert and Alfred Cellier's The Mountebanks at the Lyric; when Cellier died during rehearsals, Caryll wrote the overture and entr'acte and completed portions of the orchestration, work that received critical praise. Also in 1892, he and George Dance adapted the opéra comique Ma mie Rosette, based on a French piece by Paul Lacôme, for a production starring Jessie Bond and Courtice Pounds at the Globe Theatre.

Caryll's first major Gaiety success came with The Shop Girl in 1894, which ran for 546 performances and marked a new era of respectable musical comedy in London, with Caryll himself conducting. He continued to compose for the Gaiety throughout the following decade, frequently collaborating with Lionel Monckton, and established himself as the most prominent conductor of light music in England. Producer Edwardes favored the word "girl" in his titles, and The Shop Girl was followed by My Girl, The Circus Girl, which accumulated over 500 performances in 1896 and 1897, and A Runaway Girl in 1898. Away from the Gaiety, Caryll also found success with The Gay Parisienne in 1896, written with George Dance, which ran 369 performances at the Duke of York's Theatre and played New York as The Girl from Paris for 281 performances before touring internationally. Other works from this period include the comic opera Dandy Dick Whittington at the Avenue Theatre in 1895, with a libretto by George Robert Sims, and The Lucky Star in 1899, produced by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and based on Emmanuel Chabrier's opéra-bouffe L'Etoile.

After the turn of the century, Caryll produced a sustained run of West End hits. The Messenger Boy appeared in 1900, followed by The Toreador in 1901, which achieved well over 600 performances. That same year, The Ladies' Paradise, with a libretto by George Dance, became the first musical comedy presented at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Further successes included The Girl From Kays in 1902, The Earl and the Girl in 1903 starring Walter Passmore and Henry Lytton, The Orchid in 1903, and The Duchess of Dantzic in 1903, a comic opera drawing on the story of Napoleon and Madame Sans-Gêne, the washerwoman who married Marshal Lefebvre and became a duchess. During the Christmas season of 1903, Caryll held the distinction of having five musicals running simultaneously in the West End. He and Monckton continued their partnership into the latter part of the decade, producing The Spring Chicken in 1905, The New Aladdin in 1906, The Girls of Gottenberg in 1907, and Our Miss Gibbs in 1909, which ran for 636 performances. Caryll also composed original scores for productions in Paris, including S.A.R. in 1908, and in Vienna, including Die Reise nach Cuba in 1901, at a time when English-language musicals were largely overlooked on the continent.

Caryll relocated to New York City in 1910, became an American citizen, and composed more than a dozen Broadway musicals over the following decade. His Broadway credits include The Pink Lady in 1911, written with Hugh Morton; Oh! Oh! Delphine!!! in 1912; Chin-Chin in 1914, which included the number "Ragtime Temple Bells"; Jack o'Lantern in 1917; Arms and the Girl; and The Girl Behind the Gun in 1918, for which P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton wrote the book. The Girl Behind the Gun subsequently became a London hit under the title Kissing Time. According to Wodehouse, Caryll was widely known as "Fabulous Felix" and maintained apartments in both London and Paris as well as a villa overlooking the Deauville racecourse. His Broadway work also encompassed the play The Girl from Maxim's.

In his personal life, Caryll was married in the 1890s to Gilbert and Sullivan performer Geraldine Ulmar and later to Maud Hill. He had a daughter, Primrose Caryll, who became an actress. Known for his extravagant spending and lavish hospitality, he entertained theatrical friends on a grand scale, though his free-spending habits occasionally brought him into difficulties with creditors. His scores were characterized by swirling waltzes and semi-operatic finales, and he was noted for composing rapidly in concentrated bursts. Edward Elgar composed his Serenade Lyrique in 1899 for Caryll's light orchestra. Over the course of his career, Caryll composed or contributed to approximately forty musical comedies and operettas. He died of a haemorrhage in New York on 29 November 1921, at the age of 60, while rehearsing the musical Little Miss Raffles.