Victor Herbert is Alive and Well in New York
On one point Alyce Mott is emphatic regarding the famed composer whom she has dedicated her time to bringing to new audiences. “If you haven’t heard Victor Herbert with an orchestra, you have not heard Herbert.”
She has made it her mission to ensure that New York audiences get such an opportunity. The Irish-born Herbert, who was also a conductor, composed operettas from the last decade of the nineteenth century until just after World War I. His influential role in America musical theatre is remarkable
Mott is the force behind the New Victor Herbert Orchestra, formed in 2016 by the Victor Herbert Renaissance Project LIVE! which she created. This past April VHRP LIVE (as she calls it for short) performed the 1911 Herbert operetta The Enchantress, which featured both the orchestra and Michael Thomas as founding conductor and Music Director.
How did she bring about its successful performance? “I wear a lot of hats,” said Mott, one of which is as producer.
Mott is also a librettist. “I do not modernize but I deepen the stories for today’s audiences.”
In addition, she is also a stage director. “I like audiences to enjoy themselves – not get bored with weak plots. I adapt the production for a new era’s sensibilities” but leave the original spirit and times completely intact.
She said, “Herbert started writing operettas in 1894. He was the musical foundation of the American musical theatre. He stood with one foot in Europe in the romantic period at the end of the 19th Century, and one foot in America, at the beginning of the 20th Century.” Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern (all Lambs) and others, all grew up listening to Herbert.
Most Victor Herbert songs are still recognizable. They include “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life,” the most famous 16-measure song in history. His single most well known operetta is Naughty Operetta, written by Rida Johnson Young, a woman in 1910. “Herbert worked with creative women quite frequently. This goes against what we’ve been told about the early 20th Century. Also women characters in all of his operettas are very strong.”
Mott oversaw the restoration of the performance materials for Herbert’s grand opera, Natoma. VHRP LIVE! was then born to produce a reading of the opera in 2014 with a 57-piece orchestra, a 36 voice chorus and 9 principals before 200 audience members. It was the first time in 100 years that living people had heard the entire opera. “We delivered it to an audience exactly as Herbert wrote it. The man got his due by a modern audience and it was magnificent.”
One of the reasons that Mott feels an affinity for The Lambs is that Victor Herbert was a member from 1896 to 1924. Mott is delighted that there is a portrait of Herbert overlooking the main room at the Club. “The Lambs’ club roster reads like a Who’s Who of musical theatre, including John Philip Sousa.” Among those whom she knew at The Lambs was Shawn Amdur and leslie Shreve. Another reason she likes The Lambs is its quiet atmosphere to hold a meeting of her creative staff or board. With Herbert’s picture looking down at them at these meetings, Mott notes, “You know, it’s a little intimidating.”
“He was a founder of ASCAP. He was a rock star – he was huge. His shows traveled across America.” His works began the process of licensing of Broadway shows.
Mott first heard Herbert’s music in 1995. “It was the most beautiful music that I’ve ever heard,” said Mott. In 1994, she was commissioned to write a new libretto by the Little Orchestra Society of New York for Herbert’s Babes in Toyland. It had to be 50 minutes long and aimed at kids.
She went to the Library of Congress and conducted research. “I had no idea who Herbert was. I had never heard any of his music.” She went to her first orchestra rehearsal for that libretto and heard the music. “I was absolutely blown away. I was changed forever.” It was produced in Avery Fisher Hall in 1995. “It sort of hooked me. I said to the conductor of the Little Orchestra Society of New York, Dino Anagnost, ‘If any of Victor Herbert’s other work is half as good as this, we are sitting on a goldmine.’” She added, “That launched us on a project of eight restorations of Victor Herbert works, primarily in Alice Tully Hall.”
Herbert, she said, was rare in being an American theatrical composer who orchestrated himself. Like Mozart, he sat at a desk with 16 musical lines on a page and wrote an entire score. “That he was able to hear all of these parts in his head is genius.”
Mott started a newsletter about Herbert in 2009. “What was he doing at the time he wrote? Who were his peers? This led me down all kinds of routes, including his influence on other people and others influence on him.”
She has a friend in Jackson, Michigan, named John Guidinger, who is one of the foremost collectors of pictures of Herbert’s era. He helps her put together a pictorial booklet that is handed out at her shows filled with original pictures from each show.”
With her other business VHSource, LLC, Mott is the only digital source of original performance materials for Victor Herbert in the world. “He’s the foundation of American musical theatre. Period. And you can’t have a revival without available performance materials.” She enjoys introducing new audiences to the genius of Herbert.
Mott hails from Adrian, Michigan, a town of about 35,000 people. She earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, then a master’s degree from University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in guidance and counseling and population planning. Finally, she earned a master’s degree in theater from Siena Heights University also in Michigan. She started directing in Michigan and performed at the Barn Theatre, in Augusta, Michigan, where many well-known people in the theatre come from. At the Barn the same years as Mott were Barbara Marineau, Becky Ann Baker, Dana Delaney, and Tom Wopat.
“It was my first professional job. The producer’s wife was the resident character woman who couldn’t sing. I was the resident character woman who could. I earned my Actor’s Equity Card, got 5 years experience running an Equity box office, and had the wonderful, almost vanished, experience of working within an Equity company full of marvelous actors for five months a year for five years.”
Mott moved to New York City in 1981 where she had a successful audition almost immediately with Dino Anagnost of the Little Orchestra Society. That audition led to a wonderful 37 year collaborative relationship with Anagnost which added to her professional resume: a NYC stage directing debut, 19 years of stage directing Amahl and the Night Visitors at Avery Fisher Hall, her debut as a NYC librettist and the creation of 8 new Victor Herbert librettos produced at Alice Tully Hall – all with a union freelance orchestra.
Mott is amidst the fifth season of her own company – VHRP LIVE! In October, they performed Orange Blossoms, a 1922 Herbert play with music. It was the last theatrical score that Victor Herbert ever composed. It’s very modern, with a female librettist, Fred de Gresac. “No Overture and no Grand Finale. It was 1922, and Herbert was definitely evolving.” This Herbert work contains one of his most haunting love songs: “A Kiss In The Dark.”It also includes a special favorite with New Yorkers, “Way Out West in Jersey.”
In February, her company will perform Falling in Love For 160 Years at Christ & St. Stephens Church, 120 West 69th Street, which is not far from Lincoln Center. As Mott writes, “Incredibly gifted and versatile, the fabulous Victor Herbert entered this world on February 1, 1859 (160 years ago) and thrilled Americans with gorgeous melodies of love for almost 40 years. This production will feature “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life,” “Falling in Love With Someone,” “Sweethearts,” “Thine Alone,” “Gypsy Love Song,” and more.
In April her company will perform Herbert’s 1913 Sweethearts in a return to Christ & St. Stephens Church, in Manhattan. As Mott describes themes of the performance, “Today’s political intrigue and shenanigans as practiced in 1913. A handsome prince about to take a throne, a lost princess found, international political maneuvering and amazingly, a #MeToo sort of song to boot. All without modern updating! The romantic operetta will feature “On Parade,” “The Game of Love,” “Sweethearts,” “For Every Lover Must Meet His Fate,” “Jeannette and Her Little Wooden Shoes, and “In the Convent They Never Taught Me That!”
Mott hopes all Lambs will join her in raising a glass in remembrance of a most influential past member, Victor Herbert.
