A Saucy Number

The Burlesque Opera of Tabasco spices up the stage again

In 1894, the First Corps of Cadets of Massachusetts, a volunteer militia composed largely of well-to-do young men, was raising money for a new armory. In a scenario that could have been lifted from a comic opera, these young cadets built funds by… staging comic operas. For one production, the Corps contacted George W. Chadwick, a composer, conductor, and concert organist to write a show. The Burlesque Opera of Tabasco, or Burlesque Opera Tabasco, a tale of love, violence, and pepper sauce in a distant land, was a smash hit, so popular in its original production full of shaven army cadets in drag as harem girls that it was picked up for a Broadway run. After that, it embarked on a limited tour, playing in thirty-five cities before falling into obscurity. This January, thanks to the doggedness of a New Orleans conductor and the deep archives of the McIlhenny Company, the full show will play at Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré, appearing before New Orleans audiences for the first time in over a century.

The Burlesque Opera of Tabasco, or Burlesque Opera Tabasco, a tale of love, violence, and pepper sauce in a distant land, was a smash hit ...

The details of the plot vary among productions, but the bones remain the same. A man finds himself shipwrecked on a foreign shore, in the part of the Middle East between the Levant and the Western imagination. He pretends to be a fine chef for a place in the pasha’s court, only to find that his predecessors have been axed (literally) for failing to provide dishes spicy enough for the potentate’s palate. Hijinks, among other things, ensue, and the day is ultimately saved by the same sauce that has propped up many an ailing jambalaya or lackluster étouffée: Tabasco.

Conductor Paul Mauffray is from an old New Orleans family, but spent much of his career in the Czech Republic. During one exploration of the New Orleans Opera archives on a visit home several years ago, he found a program for the Burlesque Opera of Tabasco—but nothing more. By chance, flipping through a history of the Tabasco company, he later found a reference to the same show, and his curiosity was sparked. Mauffray, an advocate for the recovery and performance of lost or neglected operas, was the right target for this jolt of divine inspiration. He is also a determined man, which was fortunate, since it took over five years to reconstruct the score.

No complete score of the opera has survived. Complete, in this context, would mean not only a complete set of “words,” called the libretto from the Italian for “little book,” but a set of performance parts: the different parts that the various vocalists and instrumentalists would play. Mauffray could find individual parts in archives, often with revisions or notes scrawled in difficult-to-read, old-fashioned handwriting; as the show had toured, it had undergone revision, and so he was finding fragments of these different versions. Short of money, Chadwick had sold the most popular part of the opera, a march reminiscent of Sousa, to a music publisher for a paltry sum: he had done this by ripping the relevant pages out of his copy, along with the section immediately following it. Bit by bit, though, sections trickled in. Reconstructing what he could, rearranging other places, and occasionally recomposing sections that simply couldn’t be found, like the section torn out after the march, Mauffray rebuilt the score. 

He was aided in his quest by Shane K. Bernard, the official historian of the Tabasco company, whose archives provided some of the sources Mauffray used. The archives also told the tale of the company’s relationship to the opera; the lyrics laud the sauce, but the powers that were on Avery Island didn’t know about the opera until it was headed for stages beyond Boston. An impresario named Thomas Q. Seabrooke had purchased the rights from the cadets but needed to approach Tabasco (one imagines rather sheepishly) for their consent. J. A. McIlhenny, the son of the company’s founder, was then president. Still in his twenties and with a business degree under his belt, the young sauce tycoon went to New York to consult with Seabrooke; Bernard has found a letter he wrote home to his mother telling her of his intent to allow the performances to go on—provided the five-foot-tall papier-mâché bottle of Tabasco stayed in the show. In addition, the show’s producers were to hand out little sample-sized bottles of Tabasco to theatregoers, the origin of the ubiquitous tiny Tabasco bottles that nestle, Easter-egg-like, in purses, drawers, cabinets, and stockings today. (These will also be handed out to attendees at the January production.)

... the show’s producers were to hand out little sample-sized bottles of Tabasco to theatregoers, the origin of the ubiquitous tiny Tabasco bottles that nestle, Easter-egg-like, in purses, drawers, cabinets, and stockings today.

Burlesque, in this context, means comic, but don’t go in expecting a laugh-a-minute; ideas of humor have, for better or for worse, shifted since the Gay Nineties. Bernard gave an example of a pun involving the words “dame” and “damn,” which presumably led to delightedly scandalized titters among the Gibson girls in early audiences but which shan’t startle today’s theatergoer. Great art stands the test of time; wit is of the moment. Fortunately, the music more than makes up for any humor that might have gone stale in a century and change. 

Bernard gave an example of a pun involving the words “dame” and “damn,” which presumably led to delightedly scandalized titters among the Gibson girls in early audiences but which shan’t startle today’s theatergoer.

Mauffray cautions that potential concertgoers shouldn’t underestimate the musical value of the show: yes, it’s a period piece with a Louisiana connection, but the lightness of the plot and zany origin story shouldn’t eclipse the accomplished music. Chadwick was one of the first American composers to help build a catalog of American-written concert pieces, as part of a group called the “Boston Six.” In the spring of 1894, shortly after the Tabasco opera’s Broadway run, Chadwick was presented with an America’s Greatest Composer award by the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America—who, at that time, was Antonín Dvořák, the great Czech composer who gave us the New World Symphony. Chadwick’s study in Leipzig, shortly after Arthur Sullivan (of “Gilbert and” fame) means that, according to Mauffray, “you could play this music for someone, tell them it’s a lost Gilbert and Sullivan, and they would believe you.” He urges people to listen to the YouTube clips of partial performances he’s mounted during the reconstruction process, simply to enjoy the excellent music. Bernard concurred, “I found myself emotional at the end of the opera, at this great stirring march. It’s moving.” 

The performers are excited, too. Carol Rausch, chorus master and music coordinator for the New Orleans Opera, speaking in a quick interview before a rehearsal, described the show as “totally fun”—partly because of its accessibility. “Most of the repertoire is in Italian and French, with some German, and we even did an opera in Czech a few years ago, so it’s nice to sing in English.” She also pointed to the fact that the production is very local: all but one of the principal characters are portrayed by New Orleans-based performers, so the chorus is working with their friends and colleagues. Understudies for the main characters are drawn from the chorus, which is not always the case. As Rausch described it, if a production finds itself in extremis, an agency can send a replacement singer for many of the roles in the standard repertoire; it’s not cheap, but you can have a soprano overnighted to you. For a piece this rare, that option isn’t available, so members of the chorus will serve as understudies or covers. 

Bass David Hinton, a chorus member and understudy for the Bey of Tangiers, echoed the enthusiasm for the show everyone involved in its production has shown. He particularly enjoys the Gilbert and Sullivan “lots of words” feel, addition of topical verses for New Orleans audiences, and “newness” of a recovered show—and he expects the audience will too. “There’s this idea that it’s ‘the story of Tabasco,’ a bald-faced commercial, but it’s not,” said Hinton. “It’s a nice love story with a little hot sauce in it.”  

The production runs January 25—28 at Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré. Details here.