A few years later, Arthur Hammerstein recruited Friml as an emergency replacement for the operetta composer Victor Herbert , who was to have written the music for Otto Harbach's libretto The Firefly. Herbert had quarrelled with the female lead, Emma Trentini, over the provision of an encore for her, and had left the production in a huff.
Though The Firefly (1912) was Friml's first experiment as a composer for popular audiences, it enjoyed enormous success, and ten more operettas...