Cirrus@Austlit

Fritz Hart came to Australian in 1909 as music director for J. C. Williamson's Royal Comic Opera Company. One of his first original works to be staged in the country was a re-working, with new additional music, of the 1907 two act musical farce, A Knight for a Day (1907). Originally written by Americans Raymond Hubbell (composer) and Robert B. Smith (librettist), A Knight for a Day had premiered at Wallack's Theatre, New York City in December 1907, going on to become a resounding hit (Bordman, p.281). In 'The Honour Roll of Popular Songwriters: No 29 Raymond Hubbell,' Jack Burton, records that the farce also held the 'all-time Chicago record for long runs' up until that time (p.34).

The Fritz Hart revival premiered in Australia at Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney on 9 July 1910. The Sydney Morning Herald gives an account of the narrative in its review of the premiere:

There- is just sufficient of a story in the piece to justify the introduction of the characters. A wealthy gentleman, in, recognition of a service rendered him, parts with two lockets which, in the event of the young couple fortunate enough to possess them becoming united, will secure to them rich estates in Corsica. The holders of the lucky trinkets are a Corsican youth in search of an affinity - which he finds in the daughter of a knight - and a University student, who is in love with the daughter of the principal of a ladies seminary at Illinois. Realising that their happiness is at stake, they resolve to get rid of the lockets which eventually find their way into the hands of a one-time waiter masquerading as a knight and a slavey who becomes this wife ("Knight for a Day: Musical," 6).

In the same edition another review suggests that although described as a musical farce, "the term is scarcely comprehensive enough. The play is a sort of olla podrida, for the authors have furnished a mixture embracing burlesque extravaganzas, pantomime, rollicking farce, picturesque ballets and a resplendent transformation scene. It abounds in absurd situations" ("Knight for a Day," 3).