Prince Edward Theatre original name, reopening with the world première of the musical "Evita" on 21 June 1978. Further renovations were undertaken by RHWL in 1992–93, increasing the size of the stage, reopening 3 March 1993 with a revival of "Crazy for You". The ABBA musical, "Mamma Mia!" premièred here on 6 April 1999, transferring to the Prince of Wales Theatre, after a five-year run. Owned by the Delfont Mackintosh Group, and with a capacity of 1,716, it formerly hosted "Mary Poppins" until 12 January 2008, before the show toured the UK. "Jersey Boys" opened on 18 March 2008 and moved to the
Development of musical theatre expensive real estate prices, and did not arrive in the Times Square area until the 1920s and 1930s. Broadway's first "long-run" musical was a 50 performance hit called "The Elves" in 1857. New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keene's "musical burletta" "Seven Sisters" (1860) shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. Around 1850, the French composer Hervé was experimenting with a form of comic musical theatre that came to be called opérette. The best known composers of operetta were Jacques Offenbach from the 1850s to the 1870s and Johann