(The images below are thumbnails – click on them to see larger versions.)

Broadway in "The Gay 90s"
The program for A Trip to Chinatown (1891) announces that curtain time was 8:30 PM, and informs theatergoers that carriages may pick them up at 10:50. New York's subway system would not appear until 1904.

Although few (if any) Broadway musicals of the 1890s would merit a revival today, they appeared during an era of extraordinary theatrical bounty. It was not unusual for fifty or more musical productions to open in a single season. While numerous revivals and European imports were in the mix, most of these shows were homegrown originals. Farcical musical comedies became standard Broadway fare in this decade. Following the Harrigan and Hart model, these shows had loose plots involving "ordinary people," offering enough gags and dialogue to get from song to song. Any number of composers might contribute to the score.

Producer-playwright Charles Hoyt mastered this form, which reached its peak with A Trip To Chinatown (1891 - 657), the story of a widow who accidentally maneuvers several young suburban couples into a big city restaurant – where a rich man loses his wallet before true love wins out in the end. (Did anyone say Hello Dolly?) The show was cobbled together, using songs by a multitude of composers. Thanks to interpolations made during the New York run, the score eventually included the perennial favorites "Reuben, Reuben," "The Bowery," and "After the Ball" none of which had a real connection to the plot. A Trip to Chinatown toured for several years, and its record-setting Broadway run would not be surpassed until the early 1920s. When the 1927 musical Show Boat needed an emotion-packed song to symbolize the sound of 1890s, Hammerstein and Kern interpolated  "After the Ball."

The Belle of New York (1897) did poorly on Broadway with its tale of a Salvation Army girl who prevents her millionaire boyfriend from being disinherited. But a London production in 1898 proved a surprise sensation, running more a year and receiving nine West End revivals over the next four decades. This was the first American musical to enjoy unqualified success in Britain, a trend that would expand as the 20th Century progressed. It also made a star out of Edna May, an attractive dark-haired American soprano who played the title role on both sides of the Atlantic. The songs, popular in their day, have not had any lasting fame. However, when most people think of the entertainments of the "Gay 90s," this is the sort of show they picture – lighthearted musical comedy with a touch of innocent romance, all designed to showcase lovely young women in lavish but moderately immodest outfits.

The 1890s also brought the first Broadway revue, The Passing Show (1894). This almost vaudeville-like hodgepodge of songs, sketches and specialty acts drew little attention, and the revue format would not catch on until Florenz Ziegfeld introduced his Follies in 1907. There is far more on this in the pages ahead.

Early Black Musicals
In the years following the Civil War, minstrel shows were the only professional stage outlet for African American performers, so it is no surprise that the earliest black musicals grew out of the minstrel tradition. The Creole Show (1890) reshaped minstrelsy's all-male tradition by offering a female interlocutor and other women in an all-black cast. With a successful tour and a New York run, this production proved that black musicals had substantial commercial appeal.