THE D'OYLY CARTE OPERA COMPANY

Eugene Clarke as Captain Corcoran in H.M.S. Pinafore

Eugene Clarke (1881)

Eugene Clarke had been a regular artist on the New York concert and opera stage for ten years by the time he was engaged in May 1881 to play the title role with R. D'Oyly Carte & E. E. Rice's Second Opera Comique (touring) Billee Taylor Company. He must have been a success for in June, in a non-Doyly Carte production at Oakland Garden, Rice used him in the title role in place of Arnold Breedon.

It was his only engagement with the D'Oyly Carte organization, but he had earlier appeared as Captain Corcoran at the Standard Theatre in the first New York production of H.M.S. Pinafore. His other comic opera roles included the Defendant and Captain Corcoran in Trial by Jury and H.M.S. Pinafore (Broad Street Theatre, Philadelphia, February 1879), Peter in Alfred Cellier's The Sultan of Mocha with Blanche Roosevelt's Company (a disappointing production at the Union Square Theatre, September 1880), Archibald Grosvenor in Patience with E. E. Rice's Company (Booth's Theatre and on tour, November-December 1881), and Pooh-Bah in The Mikado with the Philadelphia Church Choir Company (Criterion Theatre, Brooklyn, March-April 1886).

C Index  |  "Who Was Who" Homepage