Miss Esmeralda

Miss Esmeralda is a Victorian burlesque, in two acts, with music by Meyer Lutz and Robert Martin and a libretto by Fred Leslie, under his pseudonym "A. C. Torr", and Horace Mills. It is based on Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris.

The piece premiered in 1887 at the Gaiety Theatre in London, starring Marion Hood in the title role, with Frank Thornton as Quasimodo and featuring E. J. Lonnen and Letty Lind.

John Hollingshead had managed the Gaiety Theatre from 1868 to 1886 as a venue for variety, continental operetta, light comedy, and musical burlesques. In 1886, Hollingshead ceded the management of the theatre to George Edwardes, whom he had hired in 1885. Fred Leslie wrote many of the theatre's pieces under his pseudonym, "A. C. Torr". Beginning with Little Jack Sheppard (1885), Edwardes expanded the format of the burlesqes to full-length pieces with original music by Meyer Lutz, instead of scores compiled from popular tunes. These included Monte Cristo Jr (1886); Miss Esmeralda (1887), Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim (1887), Mazeppa, Faust up to Date (1888), Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué (1888), Carmen up to Data (1890), Cinder Ellen up too Late (1891) and Don Juan (1892, with lyrics by Adrian Ross). In the early 1890s, as burlesque went out of fashion, Edwardes changed the focus of the theatre from musical burlesque to the new genre of Edwardian musical comedy.