Latest Issues
Adaptations
-
y
To The Green Isles Direct
Les Cent Vierges [The Hundred Virgins]
1875
Melbourne
:
Azzoppardi, Hildreth and Co.
,
1873
Z1298367
1875
single work
musical theatre
opera
Opera Bouffe.
This adaptation of Les Cent Vierges, staged under the title To the Green Isles Direct was advertised as having been arranged and re-worked from Charles Lecoq's Les Cent Veirges (libretto by H. C. Chivot, A. Duru and L. Clairville). Akhurst, who had returned to England in 1869, began working on the adaptation shortly after its debut in Paris at the Fantaisies-Parisiennes on 16 March 1872. His version, staged in London in May 1874, was seen by W.S. Lyster and Henry Bracy, who bought the rights and presented it in Australia the following year. How much the production was re-worked or re-written is unclear.
The story concerns two English ladies who mistakenly board a ship carrying wives to the womanless colony of the Green Isles. Their distraught husbands follow. The ladies are placed in the wedding lottery, having failed to convince the Governor and his Aide of their plight and the fact that they are already married. The two husbands dress as women and join the lottery, winning the Governor and the Aide. They then raise a mutiny among the bachelors. The ship with its lost consignment of women is eventually found and the two husbands are finally reunited with their wives.
