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The success of A Gaiety Girl in 1893, the first musical by the team of Hall, Greenbank and Jones (followed by another such success, The Shop Girl in 1894), had confirmed to Edwardes that he was on the right track. He immediately set the team to work on An Artist's Model. Edwardes wanted his Daly's Theatre musicals to be slightly more sophisticated than his light and simple Gaiety Theatre musicals. Hall's new book kept the snappy dialogue of the previous work, but paired it with a romantic plot, tacked on at the last minute when Edwardes managed to engage the popular Marie Tempest, and a role was quickly written in for her. This lucky chance set up the formula for a series of successes for the Edwardes-Hall-Jones-Greenbank team at Daly's Theatre.[3]
The story is set in France. The eponymous model, having married a millionaire and been left a widow, returns to the studio in order to recover the affections of a lovelorn artist. He repulses her advances and she becomes engaged to an English nobleman, but then the artist woos her. The Times opening night review thought the story was weak (it was likely edited after that) but praised the lyrics and music.[4]
An Artist's Model was succeeded by The Geisha, which was to be the biggest international hit the British musical theatre had known, playing for 760 performances in its original London run and thousands of performances on the Continent (one source counts some 8,000 in Germany alone) and in America and then touring for decades in Britain. Still more hits followed.
^Compton-Rickett, Arthur and Ernest Henry Short, Ring Up the Curtain: Being a Pageant of English Entertainment Covering Half a Century (1970; first published 1938) Ayer Publishing ISBN0-8369-5299-5