The Music Master

Music Master, The (1904), a play by Charles Klein. [ Belasco Theatre, 627 perf.] For sixteen years, the once‐successful Viennese conductor Anton von Barwig (David Warfield) has searched for his daughter, who was taken from him by his wife when she deserted him for an American bounder. The search has taken him to New York, where he struggles to make a living by teaching music. Von Barwig's reputation as a teacher brings to his door young society girls, one of whom is Helen Stanton (Minnie Dupree). In time von Barwig comes to realize that Helen is his long‐lost child, but when he confronts her father, Henry A. Stanton (Campbell Golan), Stanton warns him that exposing the truth would destroy Helen's chances of marrying the wealthy Beverly Cruger (J. Carrington Yates). Reluctantly von Barwig prepares to leave for Vienna, but Helen has discovered who he is and welcomes him into her home. Most critics dismissed the David Belasco production as shallow and excessively sentimental. Arthur Hornblow wrote in Theatre Magazine, “In the hands of another stage manager [read producer] and with another actor as the music master, we might have had theatricalism and unreality in place of genuineness of character and emotion.” Warfield played the role for three years and returned to it at intervals as late as 1916.