Illustrated music sheet cover for The Colonel Waltz by Ernest Bucalossi, conductor of the incidental music played on the opening night of the farce The Colonel by F.C. Burnand. Colour lithograph by Stannard & Son. Published by Hopwood & Crew, 1881

Five page piano score for The Colonel Waltz by E. Bucalossi, with an illustrated cover depicting an Aesthetic maiden with sunflowers in her hair, resting on a framed image of a scene from the play. The illustration features the symbols of aestheticism: the lily, the sunflower, and peacock feathers.

Given by Mrs. Belinda Rudd

Eugene Bucalossi, composer of The Colonel Waltz, was the composer of the incidental music played on the opening night of The Colonel at the Prince of Wales Theatre, and also the composer of one of the pieces played, 'My Queen', described on the theatre programme as a 'New Valse'

Historical significance: This collection came to the V&A through the family of the actor-manager Edgar Bruce

The Colonel was first produced at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre on 2nd February 1881, and its initial run lasted for 550 performances. Simultaneously, a second company was touring the provinces. On 4th October 1881, The Colonel became the first play in twenty years, since the death of Prince Albert in 1861, to receive a Command Performance before Queen Victoria. The theatre’s manager, Edgar Bruce, transferred it to the Imperial Theatre in 1883 and the new Prince’s Theatre in 1884. In July 1887, there was a revival at the Comedy Theatre.

Like many contemporary English theatrical entertainments, the play is based on a French model: Jean François Bayard’s Le mari à la campagne, first produced in 1844, and adapted for the English stage in 1849 by Morris Barnett as The Serious Family (there was also a German version, Er muß auf’s Land, 1846). These comedies are based on a Tartuffe-type plot about a well-situated family infiltrated by a religious impostor who threatens to gain control over the family and its fortune and is thwarted by the intervention of an old friend who comes to the rescue: by a naval officer in the French original; by an Irish army captain in The Serious Family; and by the American colonel after whom the play is named in the later adaptation. In all versions, a young husband uses the pretence of going “to the country” — hence the title of Bayard’s play — as a means of escaping his oppressive domestic circumstances. In all versions, too, the family friend restores the husband’s supremacy in his home by pointing out to the misguided wife the dangers inherent in suppressing innocent and fashionable pleasures in the name of an exaggerated devotion. Burnand’s most important modification to this plot consists in substituting aesthetic impostors for the religious hypocrites of the earlier versions.

This illustration is the cover of the printed piano music for The Colonel Waltz, based on incidental music for the play which was composed by Ernest Bucalossi, who also conducted the orchestra on the opening night in London. The printed note on the cover dedicates it 'To Edgar Bruce Esq.', the manager of the Prince of Wales Theatre who originally produced the play and who transferred it to the Imperial Theatre in 1883 and the new Prince’s Theatre in 1884.

The aesthetic satire The Colonel opened on 2nd February at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Adapted by F.C. Burnand, it concerned the duplicitous Professor of Aesthetics Lambert Streyke and his supposed painter nephew, Basil Giorgione, who were thinly-disguised caricatures of the perceived leaders of the 'Aesthetic school' Oscar Wilde and James Whistler. Du Maurier advised Burnand on the design, and the resulting drawing room set, with Morris wallpaper, a dado, blue china, lilies, peacock feathers and Japanese fans, proved so attractive that several critics considered The Colonel a good advertisement for the style it intended to mock. Lilies, a sunflower and a peacock feather also feature in this music sheet cover.

S.631-2010