Editing Ivor Novello (section)

==1930s musicals==
[[File:Ivor Novello (David Ivor Davies) (1893–1951) (gcf03577).jpg|thumb|Portrait of Novello by Emil Veresmith (oil on canvas, 1924; [[National Library of Wales]])]]
After beginning the 1930s with a series of non-musical plays – ''I Lived with You'' (1932), ''[[Fresh Fields (play)|Fresh Fields]]'', ''Proscenium'', ''Sunshine Sisters'', ''Flies in the Sun'' (all 1933) and ''Murder in Mayfair'' (1934) – Novello returned to composition in 1935 with ''[[Glamorous Night]]'', which was the first of a series of enormously popular musicals.<ref name=Grdn/> ''[[The Times]]'' considered that it was for these that Novello would be popularly remembered.<ref name=times/> Paul Webb, in the ''[[Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians]]'', writes that Novello's show saved the fortunes of the [[Theatre Royal, Drury Lane]]:
{{blockquote|Dominating the British musical theatre from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s, his shows were heavily influenced by the operettas that he had grown up with (he saw ''[[Die lustige Witwe]]'' 27 times), but had a highly individual style of their own. Blending musicals with opera, operetta and both modern and classical dance, these shows were considered something of an anachronism in their own time, but that was part of their appeal.<ref name=grove/>|}}
Another model was Coward's 1929 musical ''[[Bitter Sweet (operetta)|Bitter Sweet]]'', which Novello called "a ''lovely'', lovely thing ... sheer joy from beginning to end". That, too, was an old-fashioned musical, "so full of regret ... for a vanished kindly silly darling age".<ref>Letter from Novello to Coward, undated, in Day, p. 156</ref>

For all his four 1930s musicals, Novello wrote the book and music, [[Christopher Hassall]] wrote the lyrics, and the orchestrations were by Charles Prentice. ''Glamorous Night'' starred Novello and [[Mary Ellis]], with a cast including [[Zena Dare]], [[Olive Gilbert]] and [[Elizabeth Welch]], and ran from 2 May 1935 to 18 July 1936, at Drury Lane and then the [[London Coliseum]].<ref>"Theatres", ''The Times'', 2 May 1935, p. 12; and 18 July 1936, p. 12</ref> ''[[Careless Rapture]]'' ran from 11 September 1936 for 296 performances, with Novello, [[Dorothy Dickson]] and Zena Dare in the leading roles.<ref>"Drury Lane", ''The Times'', 12 September 1936, p. 10; and Gaye, p. 1529</ref> ''[[Crest of the Wave (musical)|Crest of the Wave]]'' starred Novello, Dickson and Gilbert, and ran from 1 September 1937 for 203 performances.<ref name=grove/> The last of Novello's prewar musicals was ''[[The Dancing Years]]'', which starred Novello, Ellis and Gilbert, opened at Drury Lane, closed on the outbreak of the [[Second World War]], toured and then reopened at the [[Adelphi Theatre]], running in the West End for a combined total of 696 performances and closing on 8 July 1944.<ref>Gaye, p. 1530</ref> This show was the closest Novello came to fulfilling his mother's early ambitions for him to write operas; he played an Austrian composer-conductor at the [[Vienna State Opera|Wiener Hofoper]].<ref name=grove/>