For all his four 1930s musicals, Novello wrote the book and music, Christopher Hassall wrote the lyrics, and the orchestrations were by Charles Prentice. "Glamorous Night" starred Novello and Mary Ellis, with a cast including Zena Dare, Olive Gilbert and Elizabeth Welch, and ran from 2 May 1935 to 18 July 1936, at Drury Lane and then the London Coliseum. "Careless Rapture" ran from 11 September 1936 for 296 performances, with Novello, Dorothy Dickson and Zena Dare in the leading roles. "Crest of the Wave" starred Novello, Dickson and Gilbert, and ran from 1 September 1937 for 203 performances. The last of Novello's prewar musicals was "The Dancing Years", which starred Novello, Ellis and Gilbert, opened at Drury Lane, closed on the outbreak of the Second World War, and reopened at the Adelphi Theatre, running for a combined total of 696 performances, closing on 8 July 1944. This show was the closest Novello came to fulfilling his mother's early ambitions for him to write operas; he played an Austrian composer-conductor at the Wiener Hofoper.