Evelyn Herbert introduced “Lover Come Back to Me” on September 19, 1928, at the Imperial Theater. She performed the song (which was reprised by Robert Halliday) as part of the Broadway musical The New Moon.

“Lover Come Back to Me” was recorded numerous times during the show’s run with three recordings making the Top Ten:

• Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra (1929, Jack Fulton, vocal, #3)
• Arden-Ohman Orchestra (1929, The Revelers, vocals, #6)
• Rudy Vallee and His Connecticut Yankees (1929, #9)

Later recordings of “Lover Come Back to Me” to make the pop charts included:

• Perry Askam (1930, The New Moon Company chorus, vocals, #20)
• Nat “King” Cole (1953, with Billy May and His Orchestra, #16)

Loosely based on an eighteenth century autobiography, The New Moon tells the story of a French aristocrat with revolutionary sympathies who is arrested by the French authorities for being an enemy of the state. While being returned to France on a ship named “New Moon,” the crew mutinies, and the hero escapes to an island where he lives until his pardon from the newly formed Republican French government.

For its out-of-town tryouts, The New Moon opened in Philadelphia on December 22, 1927, but was closed down for reworking nearly a year before its New York opening. The show was generally well received in the Big Apple and had a healthy run of 509 performances. J. Brooks Atkinson, theater critic for the New York Times, called the show

... an unusually pleasing musical comedy ... bedecked with flowing and brocaded costumes, sung, for the most part, beautifully, and acted with a grandeur that verges upon grandiloquence.

Other hit songs from Romberg/Hammerstein score were “Marianne” (the B-side to “Lover Come Back to Me” by the Arden-Ohman Orchestra), “Stout-Hearted Men” (the B-side to “Lover Come Back to Me” by Perry Askam), and “Softly As in a Morning Sunrise,” and “One Kiss” (both on a recording by Nat Shilkret and His Orchestra). It would seem Romberg was not above borrowing from other composers; the opening bars for the melody for “One Kiss” are virtually identical to Vincent Youmans’ “No, No, Nanette.” “Softly As in a Morning Sunrise” endures as an oft-recorded jazz standard.

Preceding the The New Moon was an unrelated 1919 silent film with the same name, but following the stage musical there were two MGM screen adaptations. The first was the then-successful but now largely forgotten 1930 film starring Grace Moore, Lawrence Tibbett, Adolph Menjou, and Roland Young. The setting was changed to Russia and the similarities to the original stage plot were few, but “Lover, Come Back to Me” was retained and sung by Moore. The second was released in 1940 and starred Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. A mostly faithful adaptation, New Moon, as it was titled, is a generally well-reviewed Eddy/Mac Donald vehicle.

In 1989 a videotaped performance of the New York City Opera’s production of The New Moon was aired, this being most faithful to the original libretto of the operetta.

According to David Ewen in his book, All the Years of American Popular Music, “Lover Come Back to Me” was

... one of Romberg’s most beloved melodies, though not his most original, since its middle section makes more than a passing reference to Tchaikovsky’s piano piece June Baracolle.

Beyond his melody, jazz musicians appreciate the “Lover Come Back to Me” chord progressions, which are often used as the basis for improvisations; one example is Art Blakey’s “Quicksilver.”

William Zinsser in Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs relates how Hammerstein turned over his lyrics for “Lover Come Back to Me” to Romberg, only to have the composer prop them on the piano, mumble them as he played the corresponding notes, and then declare, “It fits.”