IN CASE YOU MISSED IT!

Orange Blossoms Opened Tuesday-Wednesday, October 23-24, 2018 

Victor Herbert’s 1922 Comedic play with Music Book by Fred DeGresac

Lawyers! Playboys! Damsels in Distress! VHRP LIVE!’s Fifth Season kicked off with the 1922 comedic play with music, Orange Blossoms. Come, glimpse the beginning of the Roaring Twenties, Victor Herbert style!

While the divorce business keeps Lawyer Brassac’s coffers quite full, he finds himself considered the White Knight to far too many female clients in need of rescuing. Through it all runs wonderful Herbert melodies including, “Way Out West in Jersey,” “A Dream of Orange Blossoms” and “A Kiss in The Dark,” which is is one of the many opera gems Victor Herbert launched into popular culture. This song is a very modern examination of the power of a simple kiss to send someone swooning into the heights of true love, and has been recorded by Beverly Sills, Eileen Farrell, and others. 

Alyce Mott, Artistic Director of VHRP LIVE! says, “Orange Blossoms stands proudly at the very beginning of those ‘roaring twenties’ and proves Herbert to still be the finest American theatrical composer of the that time, until Kern’s Show Boat burst on the scene. This score is filled with surprises and modern touches including neither an Overture nor a Grand Finale. The songs of Orange Blossoms are woven together with a well-written book by Fred (Frederique) DeGresac, a rare female librettist, who also collaborated with Herbert on The Red Mill (1910), The Enchantress (1911) and our April 2019 performance of Sweethearts (1913).”

Orange Blossoms was the very last theatrical composition by Herbert before his passing in 1924.

Orange Blossoms features Drew Bolander, Joanie Brittingham, Keith Broughton, Susan Case, Tom Carle, Alexandra Clint, Alexa Delvin, JoAnna Geffert, Colm Fitzmaurice, Jenny Lindsey, Quintin Harris, Jonathan Fox Powers, Elisabeth Slaten, Sarah Caldwell Smith, David Seatter and Bray Wilkins.