Queen Victoria's Royal Jubilee Cantata by composer W.G. Cusins dated 1887

[Queen Victoria]; W. G. Cusins (composer): Royal Jubilee Cantata.
 
Royal Jubilee Cantata, “Grant the Queen a long life.” Programme and words. Buckingham Palace, Friday Evening, 15th July, 1887.
 
Size approx. 190 × 230 mm extended to 380 x 230mm. Stout card, with elaborate embossed lace-pattern border, royal arms in colour at head, and multiple crowned royal cyphers in blind and colour. Folding bifolium, the outer leaf forming the decorative title-page, the inner leaf printed with the full cantata text and programme.
 
Unbound, as issued. Some light handling marks and faint surface soiling, a few offset smudges to the blank verso, but generally very clean and fresh; embossing crisp and well-defined, colours bright. Very good.
 
Issued for the Buckingham Palace performance celebrating Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, held on 15 July 1887. The programme details a specially commissioned “Royal Jubilee Cantata” by W. G. Cusins (Master of the Queen’s Music), with words selected by the Rev. Canon Duckworth, and a programme of operatic and orchestral items (Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, Meyerbeer, Bizet), performed by leading singers of the day including Madame Albani and Madame Trebelli, with chorus and orchestra under Cusins’s direction. The inner leaf prints the full sacred text of the cantata, drawn from the Psalms and Prophets, culminating in “God Save the Queen.”
 
Such palace-issue Jubilee ephemera were produced in limited numbers for invited guests and participants.