Gilbert and Sullivan – I’ve Got A Little List

Introduction:-

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas and a cantata between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known.

Gilbert, who wrote the libretti for these operas, created fanciful “topsy-turvy” worlds where each absurdity is taken to its logical conclusion. Worlds in which fairies rub elbows with British lords, flirting is a capital offence, gondoliers ascend to the monarchy, and pirates emerge as noblemen who have gone astray. Some of Gilbert’s fanciful storylines are based on real experiences. As the story goes, when W. S. Gilbert was just 2 years old he was kidnapped by Italian bandits. His parents were on holiday in Naples when a couple of men approached the maid looking after baby Gilbert and demanded the child. For a small fortune of £25, his parents were able to win back their son. Whether the dramatic story is true or not, it had a profound effect on Gilbert’s story-telling. He created the character Ruth, the foolish nursery-maid from The Pirates of Penzance, and wrote The Gondoliers, which tells the story of the heir to the throne, who was kidnapped as a baby.

Sullivan, six years Gilbert’s junior, composed all the music, contributing memorable melodies that could convey both humour and pathos. I defy any of you to go to a G & S performance and not to have tunes buzzing about in your head for days afterwards.

Their operas have enjoyed broad and enduring international success and are still performed frequently throughout the English-speaking world. Gilbert and Sullivan introduced innovations in content and form that directly influenced the development of musical theatre through the 20th century. The operas have also influenced political discourse, literature, film and television and have been widely parodied and pastiched by humorists.

Richard D’Oyly Carte:-

As well as being an hotelier, composer and theatre manager, Richard D’Oyly Carte was also a talent agent and comic opera enthusiast. The ‘scheme of his life’, as he called it, was to make comic opera as popular in England as it was in France. It was this desire that led him to bring Gilbert and Sullivan together. In 1881, after nearly ten years of collaboration, Carte decided that he would open his own theatre to showcase the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. When it was built, the Savoy Theatre was at the forefront of innovation. Carte and his manager, George Edwardes introduced numbered seating, free programmes, and a no tipping policy for the cloakroom, that concept that sounds familiar, eh gang? Most impressively, the Savoy Theatre was the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity. Thanks to this innovation, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe was one of the first ever productions to use electricity in the staging.

The Final Curtain:-

Gilbert and Sullivan’s partnership came to an end over a carpet.

Tensions between Gilbert and Savoy manager D’Oyly Carte had been brewing for some time, but it was Carte’s request that £500 for new carpets be taken out of The Gondoliers profits that was the final straw. Sullivan, not wanting to ruin his relationship with Carte, took a back seat in the financial dispute, and he could not understand why Gilbert would make such a fuss over ‘a few miserable pounds’. Needless to say, Gilbert and Sullivan’s relationship never fully recovered.

Major works and original London runs

Thespis; or, The Gods Grown Old (1871) 63 performances
Trial by Jury (1875) 131 performances
The Sorcerer (1877) 178 performances
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor (1878) 571 performances
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty (1879) 363 performances
The Martyr of Antioch (cantata) (1880) (Gilbert modified the poem by Henry Hart -)
Patience; or Bunthorne’s Bride (1881) 578 performances
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri (1882) 398 performances
Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant (1884) 246 performances
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu (1885) 672 performances
Ruddigore; or, The Witch’s Curse (1887) 288 performances
The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and his Maid (1888) 423 performances
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria (1889) 554 performances
Utopia, Limited; or, The Flowers of Progress (1893) 245 performances
The Grand Duke; or, The Statutory Duel (1896) 123 performances

These operettas were the forerunners of our modern musicals, and in many ways resemble them more than they do the grand operas. Their songs and choruses — mostly light and comic in nature — are interspersed with spoken dialogue rather than recitative. In fact, few if any of the performers in Gilbert and Sullivan’s original productions were professional opera singers; some of the chorus members were even outright amateurs.

Though over a century old, the works of Gilbert and Sullivan are as fresh and sparkling today as the day they were written. Gilbert may have chosen specific aspects of Victorian society for his satire, but his wit is as relevant now as it ever was: “I always voted at my party’s call / And I never thought of thinking for myself at all,” sings Sir Joseph Porter in Pinafore, but the lines could as easily belong to most modern politicians.

In 1982, Joseph Papp mounted a successful production of The Pirates of Penzance on Broadway, with Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline in two of the leading roles and Gilbert and Sullivan songs continue to turn up in places as diverse as episodes of “The Muppet Show” (Tit-Willow), “Animaniacs” (Three Little Maids from School, as well as much of The Pirates of Penzance), “The Simpsons” (selections from The Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore ) and “Rumpole of the Bailey” (The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring, among others). A performance of “A British Tar” from HMS Pinafore even turns up in a Star Trek episode.

The operettas are pretty remarkable to be honest. The choruses are always great fun and Gilbert always manages to put in one or more songs, the famous patter songs, that are incredibly difficult to sing. Every company has their patter song specialists and I take my hat off to them.

As you can see there are far too many to feature them all but I will summarise a few of the more popular examples.

The Sorcerer:-

A young couple about to be married decide to share their happiness with the whole village by hiring a sorcerer to make a love potion to make everyone fall in love. Naturally, this backfires…

HMS Pinafore:-

A lowly sailor and his Captain’s beautiful daughter find their love thwarted by their differences in rank, an evil shipmate, and an incompetent Lord.

The Pirates Of Penzance:-

Young Frederic, finally free of his apprenticeship to a band of pirates, falls in love with Mabel, the daughter of a Major-General. Unfortunately, the Pirate King and the nurserymaid he scorned take advantage of his sense of duty to keep him from enjoying his newfound happiness for long…

Patience:-

The dragoons love the ladies, but all the ladies love Bunthorne, the self-absorbed Aesthetic – except for Patience, the dairy maid he loves. Until, of course, an even more Aesthetic Aesthetic comes along and steals them away…

The Mikado:-

The son of the Mikado of Japan, disguised as a wandering minstrel in order to escape his father’s order to marry the elderly Katisha, finds that the girl he loves is engaged to be married to the Lord High Executioner of Titipu. But that’s the least of his worries when his father and Katisha show up searching for him.

The Sorcerer – My Name is John Wellington Wells