featured popular orchestral music and selections from comic operas by such composers as Sullivan and Cellier, and excerpts from English grand operas by Balfe and Wallace. Singers included Zélie de Lussan, Marie Roze, Ben Davies, David Ffrangcon-Davies, Durward Lely and Charles Manners. Instrumental soloists included Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Eugène Ysaÿe. Thomas Barrett had been property master at the Amphitheatre, Liverpool, and both his sons had quickly gained a taste for the theatre. Stuart's elder brother, Stephen (1855–1924), became a music-hall performer, appearing under the stage name Lester Barrett. Gradually the music Stuart composed for local shows, and his popular ballads and music-hall songs began to supersede the composition of serious and religious music. He composed music hall songs as "T. A. Barrett" and under the pseudonyms "Leslie Thomas", "Lester Barrett" and, most notably, "Leslie Stuart". He wrote many popular songs for the blackface performer Eugene Stratton, including perhaps his best-remembered music hall song, "Lily of Laguna" (1898), and "Little Dolly Daydream." He also wrote the patriotic ballad "Soldiers of the King" (1894, now sung as "Soldiers of the Queen"). In 1886, Stuart married Mary Catherine Fox, a schoolteacher (died 1941). Stuart's earliest theatrical composing and writing was also for the Manchester theatre. Here he provided songs and incidental music for, in particular, the local pantomimes, which boasted famous names in their casts. Stuart made a name in the 1890s by writing popular individual numbers that were interpolated into several West End and touring musicals by other composers. Later in his career, he would actively oppose this practice. The first of these songs was "Lousiana Lou". This had already been published and performed in music hall before being picked up by Ellaline Terriss and inserted, along with "The Little Mademoiselle", into the original production of The Shop Girl (1894), at the Gaiety Theatre. During the run of George Edwardes's An Artist's Model (1895), Stuart wrote several numbers that were interpolated (including "The Soldiers of the Queen", which was later famous as "Soldiers of the King"), and both wrote the lyric and composed "Trilby Will Be True" for Maurice Farkoa to perform at Daly's Theatre. Subsequently he had songs used in Baron Golosh, The Circus Girl (1896), the London production of the American musical A Day in Paris (1897), Carl Kiefert's The Ballet Girl (1897) and The Yashmak (1897). Stuart composed some 65 songs including, in addition to those mentioned above,