Max Freeman

Maurice "Max" Freeman (c. 1852 – March 27 or 28, 1912) was a German-born actor, theater director, theater manager, playwright, and producer who spent the majority of his career in the United States. Born in Berlin, he made his professional stage debut in that city in 1868, playing Francis in Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers. He left Germany in 1871 and settled in the United States, where he took on the role of theatre manager for the Germania Theatre, located at 4th Avenue and 8th Street in New York City. By 1873 he had relocated to San Francisco, California, joining the California Theatre Stock Company, where his first role was Count Kantschukoff in the first English-language staging of Franz von Suppé's comic opera Fatinitza. He subsequently joined the Emilie Melville Opera Company, touring the United States in light opera productions. Known as the "godfather of comic opera," Freeman built a stage career as an actor in America that lasted from 1873 until his death in 1912, and he also served as stage manager for both the Madison Square Theatre and the Casino Theatre during extended tenures at each.

Freeman's first notable success on the New York stage came in Henry E. Abbey's 1882 production of Victorien Sardou's Divorçons at Abbey's Park Theatre, where he played a waiter in Act 3. Additional Broadway roles followed in quick succession, among them Bertrand in Bartley Campbell's Siberia (1883), Koulikoff Demetrovitch in A Russian Honeymoon (1883), and Cragin in William Young's The Rajah (1883). He also appeared as Count de Brionne in Anselma (1885), an English-language adaptation of Sardou's 1873 French play Andréa prepared by Leander Richardson for the Austrian actress Antonie Janisch. That production became the subject of multiple court disputes over performance rights to Sardou's work and was ultimately barred from further performances by the New York Supreme Court in December 1885.

One of Freeman's most significant early contributions to Broadway was his English-language adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's Orfée aux enfers, retitled Orpheus and Eurydice, which was performed at the grand opening of the Bijou Theatre on December 1, 1883. Freeman also appeared in the production in the role of Pluto. In 1886 he portrayed Chevalier de Brabazon in the United States premiere of Edward Jakobowski's Erminie, a role he would reprise in the 1899 Broadway revival of the same work. In 1890 his original musical play Claudius Nero, adapted from Ernest Erkstein's novel Nero, premiered at Niblo's Garden on October 22. The work incorporated songs and ballet and is regarded as an early example of the musical form.

Freeman's directing career on Broadway began in 1896 with Oscar Hammerstein I's comic opera Santa Maria. He went on to direct a substantial number of productions, including the musical Miss Manhattan (1897, with a libretto by George V. Hobart), Reginald De Koven's operetta The Highwayman (1897), and two musicals with books by Edgar Smith and Louis De Lange — The Little Host (1898) and Mother Goose (1898). His subsequent directing credits included Broadway to Tokio (1900), Stanislaus Stange's Quo Vadis (1900), Sweet Anne Page (1900), Theodore Burt Sayre's Manon Lescaut (1901), A Modern Magdalen (1902), Gretna Green (1903), Love's Lottery (1904), and A China Doll (1904). Several productions he both directed and performed in, among them Ludwig Englander's The Rounders (1899), in which he played Joseph; Hubert Henry Davies's Cynthia (1903); Gustav Kerker and Harry B. Smith's The Blonde in Black (1903), in which he played M. Carrousel Ladjos; and Henri Dumay's Mademoiselle Marni (1905), which marked his final Broadway directing credit.

Freeman continued to appear as a performer on Broadway through the final years of his career. Late-career acting credits included roles in Heidelberg (1902), a return to Divorçons (1907), The Girl from Rector's (1909), and The Girl in the Taxi (1910). His last appearance on the New York stage was as Professor Diggs in Philip Bartholomae's Over Night in 1911. His final stage performance of any kind took place in Cleveland in 1912, in A. H. Woods's Modest Suzanne. Freeman died on March 27 or 28, 1912, his body discovered at the Hotel Grenoble in New York City. He had died by hanging, and the precise time of death was determined to have been either late in the evening of March 27 or in the morning hours of March 28.