Lionel Monckton As a Composer

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1058, 23 August 1930, Page 24

Lionel Monckton As a Composer

CHALLENGE TO SULLIVAN

To the world of playgoers in the days before talkies, Sir Arthur Sullivan was the musician who was held up as the greatest composer of light operas.

Even today, when the dry bones rattle in dressing rooms, and the dust is thick in the stalls of legitimate theatres, Sullivan’s reputation for “composition” is unchallenged. Nevertheless, Lionel Monckton, whose name adorned many a play bill in the past, has a record equal to that of Sullivan in the light opera field. Most of his tuneful numbers are known to the older generation of New Zealand playgoers, and he is remembered best, perhaps, for the music of "The Arcadians” (1909) and “The Quaker Girl” (1910). His first compositions were heard in public at the London Gaiety, in the prosperous days of George Edwardes, and he contributed', many popular songs to “The Shop Girl,” "The Geisha,” “San Toy,” “The Cingalee,” “The Greek Slave,” and “Cinder-Ellen-up-too-Late.” Monckton was part composer of “The Toreador” (1901), “The Orchid” (1903), "The Spring Chicken” (1905), “The New Aladdin” (1906), “The Girls of Gottenburg (1907), “Our Miss Gibbs” (1909), “Bric-a-Brac” (1915),

“Airs and Graces" (1917), and “The Boy” (1917). All these musical comedies were highly successful, and solos from the pieces are still favourites with many amateurs today. Monckton was the son of an actress, and came well by his stagecraft.