Osmond Carr

Frank Osmond Carr (23 April 1858 – 29 August 1916), known as F. Osmond Carr, was an English composer who wrote the music for several Victorian burlesques before turning to the new genere of Edwardian musical comedy, and also composing some comic operas. He often worked with the lyricist Adrian Ross, and several of his pieces were created for the producer George Edwardes.

Carr was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. His parents were George Saxton Carr, a schoolmaster and Margaret Durden Carr, née Painter. He attended New College, Oxford, and Downing College, Cambridge, receiving a B.A. degree in 1883 and apparently returning to Oxford to receive a music degree there in 1884. He continued his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, earning a Cambridge M.A. and B.Mus. in 1886 and gained a doctorate in music at Oxford in 1891.

Carr's first produced work (with lyricist Adrian Ross) was the burlesque Faddimir, or the Triumph of Orthodoxy at the Vaudeville Theatre in London in 1889, which gained the attention of producer George Edwardes. Edwardes began to commission songs from Carr and Ross, including a song for his next Gaiety Theatre burlesque Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué. They next wrote the score for a burlesque of Joan of Arc, or, The merry maid of Orleans (1891), and then the songs for what many historians consider the first British musical comedy, In Town (1892). Carr also composed another burlesque that year, Blue Eyed Susan, for the Prince of Wales Theatre. Carr next composed two successful musicals for producer Fred Harris: Morocco Bound (1893), a model for the music-hall-influenced "variety musicals" to come, and Go-Bang (1894), both with lyrics by Ross.

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