Haste to the Wedding

Haste to the Wedding is a three-act comic opera with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by George Grossmith, based on Gilbert's 1873 play, The Wedding March. The opera was the most ambitious piece of composition undertaken by Grossmith.

The piece was produced under the management of Charles Wyndham at the Criterion Theatre, London, opening on 27 July 1892. It closed on 20 August 1892, after a run of just 22 performances. Although a failure, the opera introduced the 18-year-old George Grossmith, Jr., the composer's son, to the London stage. He would go on to a long career in the theatre.

On 15 November 1873, Gilbert's play The Wedding March debuted at the Court Theatre, written under his pseudonym F. Latour Tomline. It was a free adaptation of Eugène Marin Labiche's Un chapeau de paille d'Italie ("The Italian Straw Hat"). The play was first to have been called Hunting a Hat, but the title was changed to capitalise on the popularity of the wedding march from Wagner's Lohengrin. The name of the hero, Woodpecker Tapping, was taken from Thomas Moore's ballad, "The woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree." The play ran for about 92 performances, until 3 March 1874, a good run for the time. On the play's success, Stedman notes:

The Era commented that there was "enough fun... to make half-a-dozen ordinary farces." The piece was "one of Gilbert's most frequently played successes and brought him £2,500". He told the critic William Archer, in 1904, that he had written it in just a day and a half. The play was given as part of a benefit matinee at the Gaiety Theatre, London, on 4 December 1884 with a cast starring Lionel Brough and Lydia Thompson.

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