Gaby Deslys the star of Vera Violetta

The show opened on November 13, 1911, at Harmanus Bleecker Hall, in Albany, NY, playing through November 15. It then moved to the Court Square theatre, in Springfield, MA, on November 16, and the Hyperion, in New Haven, CT, on November 17 and 18. It arrived at the Winter Garden, in New York, on November 20, 1911, and played through February 29, 1912.

Set in a skating rink, the show featured Al Jolson as Claude, a blackface waiter, playing to the star of the show, Gaby Deslys, a French actress brought over by the Shuberts some months earlier, when she appeared in a show, The Revue of Revues, with Al's brother, Harry.

Among the cast shown in the opening night ad was "May West," later known as "Mae West," then just a 19 year old starlet who reportedly left the cast prior to opening night due to a conflict with Mlle. Deslys.

Al Jolson's performance in Vera Violetta was electric as can be seen in the New York Times and Variety reviews of the show printed below. Although not the star by any means, he stole the limelight from those billed above him. He sang two songs in the show, one of which reportedly while running up and down the center aisle of the theatre, and those two songs became his first commercial recordings.

Listen to Al Jolson from 1911, in his first two commercial recordings, sing:

In his review in the New York Times, Adolph Klauber wrote that Al Jolson "...succeeded in rousing the audience into its first enthusiasm of the evening, and kept them enthusiastic much of the time afterwards.