Richard D'Oyly Carte

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard D'Oyly Carte (3 May 1844 – 3 April 1901) was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era.

Carte started his career in his father's music publishing and musical instrument manufacturing business. He composed music of his own, early in his career, but soon turned to promoting the careers of others. Carte believed that a school of wholesome English comic opera could be as successful as that of the risqué French works dominating the London musical theatre in the 1870s. To that end, he brought together W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan to create a series of thirteen Savoy Operas, founding the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and building the Savoy Theatre to host the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Carte also built the Savoy Hotel and managed other hotels. In addition, he built the Palace Theatre, London, which he had intended as the home of a new school of English grand opera. Although his last ambition was not realised beyond the production of a single grand opera by Sullivan, Ivanhoe, his partnership with Gilbert and Sullivan, and his careful management of their operas and relationship, created a series of works that had unprecedented success in the musical theatre. His opera company promoted those works for over a century, and they are still performed regularly today.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Founding his opera company 2.2 Property interests 2.3 End of the partnership; Royal English Opera House 2.4 Later years 3 Personal life 4 Legacy 5 Compositions 5.1 Operettas 5.2 Songs 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Early life

Carte was born in Soho's Greek Street in the West End of London, the eldest of six children (two boys and four girls). Of Welsh and Norman ancestry (D'Oyly is Norman French),^[1] Carte was brought up in a cultured home. His father, Richard Carte (1808–1891), was a flautist, and his mother was the former Eliza Jones; they had eloped, to the disappointment of her father. To supplement his income as a performer, Carte's father joined the firm of Rudall, Rose & Co., musical instrument makers, in 1850.^[2] After he became a partner in the business, it changed its name to Rudall, Rose, Carte and Co. and later to Rudall, Carte & Co.^[3]

Carte's cultured mother exposed her family to art, music and poetry, and he studied the violin and then the flute at an early age.^[4] The family spoke French at home two days a week, and Richard often took his children to the theatre.^[2] He was educated at University College School, graduating in 1860, and then attended University College, London. In 1861, he achieved First Class level in the matriculation examination^[5] but left later that year to work in his father's business, along with his brother, Henry Williams Carte.^[6] He also studied music during this time and composed some pieces, which he dedicated to the actress Kate Terry (sister of Ellen Terry).^[7]

[edit] Career

Between 1868 and 1877, Carte wrote and published the music for a number of his own songs and instrumental works, as well as three comic operas, which were produced with success: Doctor Ambrosias – His Secret, at St. George's Hall (1868),^[8] Marie, with librettist E. Spencer Mott, at the Opera Comique (1871);^[9] and Happy Hampstead, with librettist Frank Desprez, which debuted on an 1876 provincial tour and then played at the Royalty Theatre in 1877.^[2] Carte's musical training would be helpful later in his career, as he was able to audition singers himself from the pianoforte.^[10]

At the same time, from within his father's firm and then from a nearby address in Craig's Court, Charing Cross, Carte was beginning to build an operatic and concert management agency, while also acting as a concert and lecture agent.^[4] His two hundred clients eventually included Charles Gounod, Jacques Offenbach, Adelina Patti, Clara Schumann, Antoinette Sterling, Edward Lloyd, Mr. and Mrs. German Reed, George Grossmith and Oscar Wilde.^[11] Biographer Hesketh Pearson explained Carte's success: "His acute business sense was aided by a frank and agreeable manner.... He took what other people thought were risks, but he felt were certainties. He knew everyone worth knowing... and his practical judgement was as sure as his sense of artistry."^[12] In 1870, Carte suggested to Arthur Sullivan that he compose a comic opera. Sullivan was busy with other projects and declined.^{[citation needed]} Carte conducted Sullivan's Cox and Box on tour in 1874 in tandem with Offenbach's Breaking the Spell.^[13]

[edit] Founding his opera company

In 1874, Carte leased London's Opera Comique, where he presented a Brussels company in the British premiere of the operetta Giroflé-Giroflà by Alexandre Charles Lecocq, followed by an English adaptation of Gaston Serpette's La branche cassée.^[14] Carte announced his ambitions on the front of the programme for the latter: "It is my desire to establish in London a permanent abode for light Opera."^[15] The Observer reported, "Mr D'Oyly Carte is not only a skilful manager, but a trained musician, and he appears to have grasped the fact that the public are beginning to become weary of what is known as a genuine opera bouffe, and are ready to welcome a musical entertainment of a higher order, such as a musician might produce with satisfaction".^[16] In the same year, Carte assisted in joining Offenbach with H. B. Farnie to write a new operetta on the theme of Dick Whittington and His Cat, which played in the Christmas season at the Alhambra Theatre.^[17][18][19]

In 1875, Carte became the business manager of the Royalty Theatre, under the direction of Madame Selina Dolaro. There he programmed Offenbach's La Périchole. To fill out the evening of theatre (as was the fashion in Victorian theatre), he suggested to W. S. Gilbert that Arthur Sullivan could write the music for a one-act comic opera libretto that Gilbert had written earlier; this became Trial by Jury. Carte later said it was "the scheme of my life" to found a school of family-friendly English comic opera^[20] in contrast to the bawdy burlesques and adaptations of French operettas that dominated the London musical stage at that time.^[21][22] Carte recognised that his own creative talents were inadequate for the task. He later wrote to Gilbert, "I envy your position but I could never attain it. If I could be an author like you I would certainly not be a manager. I am simply the tradesman who sells your works of art."^[23] Trial by Jury was the first great success of his scheme, becoming an unexpected hit.^[24][25] The piece proved even more popular than La Périchole.^[26]

At the Theatre Royal, in Dublin, Ireland in September 1875, while there managing the first tour of Trial by Jury, Carte met a young Scottish actress, Susan Couper Black, who used the stage name Helen Lenoir. She became fascinated by his vision for establishing a company to promote English comic opera^[27] and gave up her next engagement to join his theatrical organisation as his secretary.^[28] Lenoir was well-educated and had a grasp of detail and diplomacy and an organisational ability and business acumen that surpassed even Carte's; she became intensely involved in all of his business affairs.^[29][30]

Knowing that Gilbert and Sullivan shared his vision of increasing the respectability of English theatre, and so broadening its audience through the promotion of family-friendly English light operas, Carte gave Gilbert wider authority as a director than was customary at that time.^[31] Still, Carte continued to produce continental operetta, touring in the summer of 1876 with a repertoire consisting of three English adaptations of French opera bouffe (Offenbach’s La Périchole, Lecocq’s La fille de Madame Angot and Léon Vasseur's La Timbale d'argent) and two one-act English curtain raisers (Happy Hampstead and Trial by Jury). Carte himself was the music director of the travelling company.^[32][33]

Encouraged by the success of Trial by Jury, Carte found four backers and formed the Comedy Opera Company to produce the future works of Gilbert and Sullivan, along with the works of other British lyricist/composer teams.^[14] Carte leased the Opera Comique, a small theatre off The Strand.^[2] The first comic opera produced by the new partnership was Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer in 1877. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte were able to select their own cast, instead of using the players under contract to the theatre where the work was produced, as had been the case with their earlier works. They chose talented actors, most of whom were not well-known stars, and Carte's agency provided many of the artists to perform in the new work.^[34] The success of this piece showed Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan that there was a future in family-friendly English comic opera.^[35][36]

The Sorcerer was followed by H.M.S. Pinafore in 1878. Business for the new opera was slow at first.^[37] Carte's partners in the Comedy Opera Company advocated cutting their losses and closing the show. Carte persuaded the author and composer that a business partnership among the three of them would be profitable. He used the enforced closure of the Opera Comique for repairs to evoke a contract clause reverting the rights of Pinafore and Sorcerer to Gilbert and Sullivan, who entrusted them to him. The three each put up £1,000 and formed a new partnership under the name "Mr Richard D'Oyly Carte's Opera Company", and the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, as it later came to be called, became the sole producer of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.^[38] Under the partnership agreement, once the expenses of mounting the productions had been deducted, each of the three men was entitled to one third of the profits.^[14] Pinafore became a hit in both Britain and America, and Carte's former partners attempted to repossess the production by force during a performance, causing a celebrated fracas.^[39]

Pinafore was so popular that over a hundred unauthorised productions sprang up in America alone.^[40] To try to counter this piracy, Carte travelled to New York with Gilbert, Sullivan and the company to present an "authentic" production of Pinafore there, beginning in December 1879, followed shortly by the premiere of their next opera, The Pirates of Penzance, which they opened in New York prior to its London production.^[41] The American production and tours were profitable, but Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte tried without success for many years to control the American performance copyrights over their operas.^[42]

During the years when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were being written, Richard D'Oyly Carte also produced operas by other composer–librettist teams, either as curtain-raisers to the G&S pieces, or to fill the theatre in between G&S pieces and to broaden the offerings of his touring companies. Carte also introduced the practice of licensing amateur theatrical societies to present works for which he held the rights, increasing their popularity and the sales of scores and libretti, as well as the rental of band parts.^[43]

[edit] Property interests

The Pirates of Penzance was followed by another successful Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Patience, in 1881. With profits from the success of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership and his concert and lecture agency, Carte bought property further East along the Strand with frontage onto the Thames Embankment, where he built the Savoy Theatre (1881) and the elaborate Savoy Hotel, which opened in 1889. He chose the name after the Savoy Palace, which had been built on the site in the thirteenth century by Peter, Count of Savoy. It later passed to John of Gaunt but was destroyed in the Peasants' Revolt in 1381.^[44]

The Savoy Theatre was a state-of-the-art facility, setting a new standard for technology, comfort and decor. At the time, the Savoy seated nearly 1,300 people and was the first theatre in the world to be lit entirely with electric light.^[2] Patience was the first production at the new theatre, transferring there on 10 October 1881. At a performance shortly after it opened, Carte came before the audience on stage and broke a glowing lightbulb to demonstrate the safety of the new technology. Carte introduced several innovations: the "queue" system for the pit and gallery (an American idea); abolished tipping for coat check and other services; and printed the exact seat numbers on ticket stubs.^[2]

The Savoy Hotel, designed by architect Thomas Edward Collcutt, was financed by profits from The Mikado.^[45] It was the first hotel lit by electric lights and the first with electric elevators.^[46] Under its first manager, César Ritz, it became a well-known luxury hotel and would generate more income and contribute more to the D'Oyly Carte fortunes than any other enterprise, including the opera companies. Its success encouraged Carte to acquire and refurbish Claridge's (1894), Simpsons-in-the-Strand (1898) and The Berkeley (1901).

[edit] End of the partnership; Royal English Opera House

The Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan partnership continued to flourish through the 1880s, producing such successes as Iolanthe (1882), The Mikado (1885, which ran for an unprecedented 672 consecutive performances); The Yeomen of the Guard (1888) and The Gondoliers (1889). Carte was not just the manager of the theatre. He was a full participant in the producing partnership with Gilbert and Sullivan. According to Henry Lytton, "Mr. Carte was a great stage manager. He could take in the details of a scene with one sweep of his eagle eye and say unerringly just what was wrong."^[47]

Carte's high production values, and the quality of the operas, created a national and international taste for them, and he sent touring companies throughout the provinces, to America (generally managed by Helen) and Europe,^[14] and licensed the works to high-quality foreign companies such as J. C. Williamson's in Australia.^[48] When Queen Victoria called for a command performance of The Gondoliers at Windsor Castle in 1891, she noticed additions to the text made by some of the actors and asked Carte to explain why this was done. Carte replies that they "are what we call 'gags'." The Queen answered that she had always understood that "gags were things that were put by authority into people’s mouths." Carte rejoined, "These gags, your Majesty, are things people put into their own mouths without authority."^[2] George Bernard Shaw, writing in The Saturday Review in October 1938, stated:

Those who are old enough to compare the Savoy performances with those of the dark ages, taking into account the pictorial treatment of the fabrics and colours on the stage, the cultivation and intelligence of the choristers, the quality of the orchestra, and the degree of artistic good breeding, so to speak, expected from the principals, best know how great an advance has been made by Mr. D'Oyly Carte.^[49]

During much of the 1880s, Gilbert and Sullivan had an often tumultuous relationship, and Carte and Lenoir frequently had to smooth over their differences with a mixture of friendship and business acumen.^[50] Almost from the beginning of the partnership, the musical establishment put pressure on the composer to abandon comic opera^[51] and Sullivan asked to be released from the partnership on several occasions.^[52] Nevertheless, Carte was able to coax eight comic operas out of his partners in the 1880s.^[53]

In 1890, during the run of the last major Gilbert and Sullivan success, The Gondoliers, the three partners quarrelled over production costs, including the cost of a new carpet for the Savoy Theatre lobby. The partnership dissolved in acrimony. Gilbert brought suit, and Sullivan sided with Carte: Carte was building the Royal English Opera House in Cambridge Circus, London, close to Covent Garden, to present Sullivan's forthcoming grand opera.^[14] In consequence, after The Gondoliers closed in 1891, Gilbert withdrew the performance rights to his libretti and vowed to write no more operas for the Savoy. In consequence, after The Gondoliers closed in 1891, Gilbert withdrew the performance rights to his libretti and vowed to write no more operas for the Savoy.^[54]

Carte's first production at the Royal English Opera House was of Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe opening in January 1891. The opera was a success, playing for 155 performances, but no other operas shared the new opera house with it. Instead, Ivanhoe was presented every night with alternating casts. When Ivanhoe finally closed in July, Carte had no new work ready to play at the opera house, and it had to close. The opera house re-opened in November, with André Messager's La Basoche (originally produced in 1890 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris) at first alternating in repertory with Ivanhoe, and then La Basoche alone, closing in January 1892.^[14]

There was no new opera to fill the house, and the venture soon failed. Sir Henry Wood, who had been répétiteur for the production, recalled in his autobiography that "[i]f D'Oyly Carte had had a repertory of six operas instead of only one, I believe he would have established English opera in London for all time. Towards the end of the run of Ivanhoe I was already preparing The Flying Dutchman with Eugène Oudin in the name part. He would have been superb. However, plans were altered and the Dutchman was shelved."^[55] Carte leased the theatre to Sarah Bernhardt for a season and finally abandoned the project. He sold the huge opera house at a loss to producer Augustus Harris.^[14] It was then converted into a music hall: the Palace Theatre of Varieties and later became the Palace Theatre.^[7]

[edit] Later years

After the carpet quarrel, with The Gondoliers closing in 1891 and no more Gilbert and Sullivan operas being written, Carte turned to old friends George Dance, Frank Desprez and Edward Solomon for his next piece, The Nautch Girl, which ran for a satisfying 200 performances in 1891–92. Carte next revived Solomon and Sydney Grundy's The Vicar of Bray, which ran through the summer of 1892 until Grundy and Sullivan's Haddon Hall was ready. Haddon Hall held the stage until April 1893.^[56] In 1894, Carte hired his son, Rupert, as an assistant.

Carte and his wife, Helen (with help from their music publisher Tom Chappell), were finally able to persuade Gilbert and Sullivan to collaborate on another piece, Utopia, Limited. Until it was ready, Jane Annie, by J. M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle, with music by Ernest Ford, was produced as a stop-gap.^[56] Utopia opened in 1893, but it was the partnership's most expensive production to date, and it ran for a comparatively disappointing 245 performances, until June 1894. The Savoy then played first Mirette, with music by André Messager, then The Chieftain, by F. C. Burnand and Sullivan. This was followed by The Grand Duke, in 1896, which ran for only 123 performances and was the last collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan.^[56]

Throughout the later 1890s, Carte's health was in decline, and Helen assumed more and more of the responsibilities for the opera company. She profitably managed the theatre and the provincial touring companies.^[29] The Savoy put on a number of shows for comparatively short runs, including Sullivan's The Beauty Stone, in 1898.^[56] In 1899, Carte finally had a success again, with Sullivan and Basil Hood's The Rose of Persia. ^[56] Neither Carte nor Sullivan lived to see the success of The Emerald Isle for which Edward German completed the score.^[52]

[edit] Personal life

Carte was married twice. His first wife was Blanche Julia Prowse, the daughter of William Prowse (1801–1886), a piano manufacturer. They married in 1870^[14] and had two sons, Lucas (1872–1907) and Rupert.^[57] Blanche died in 1885,^[57] and in 1888, Carte married his assistant, Helen,^[28] Their wedding took place in the Savoy Chapel, with Arthur Sullivan as the best man.^[58] Rupert became his father's assistant in 1894, but Lucas, a barrister, was not involved in the family businesses and died of tuberculosis in 1907.

Carte's London house was at the Adelphi, not far from the Savoy.^[59] He also owned a small island in the River Thames, between Weybridge and Shepperton, located near Shepperton Lock. He built a house on the island.^[60] Originally, he intended the building to be a hotel, but he could not obtain the necessary licence and so converted it into a private home.^[61]

Carte died at his London home, from dropsy and heart disease, just short of his 57th birthday.^[14] He is buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew's church in Fairlight, East Sussex, near his parents' graves. A memorial service for him was held at the Chapel Royal of the Savoy. He left an estate valued at £250,000.^[14][62]

[edit] Legacy

Carte left the theatre, opera company and hotel to Helen, who assumed full control of the family businesses.^[63] She leased the Savoy Theatre to William Greet in 1901 and oversaw his management of the company's revival of Iolanthe, and several new comic operas.^[64] Rupert took over his late father's role as Chairman of the Savoy Hotel in 1903, which Helen continued to own.^[65] The years between 1901 and 1906 saw a decline in the fortunes of the opera company. In late 1906, Helen re-acquired the performing rights to the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from Gilbert (she already had Sullivan's) and staged a repertory season at the Savoy Theatre, reviving the opera company and leasing the Savoy to herself.^[66] Rupert assisted Mrs. Carte and W. S. Gilbert with the first revival of The Yeomen of the Guard at the Savoy in May 1897.^[67] The season, and the following one, were tremendous successes, revitalizing the company. After the repertory seasons in 1906–1908, however, the company did not perform in London again until 1919, only touring throughout Britain during that time.^[68]

At her death in 1913, Helen passed the family businesses to Carte's son, Rupert, who revived the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company with refreshed productions and London seasons, beginning in 1919, as well as provincial and foreign tours.^[69] Rupert left a strong company to his daughter Bridget D'Oyly Carte.^[70] However, the rising costs of mounting professional light opera without any government support eventually became too much for the company. Bridget was forced to close the company in 1982.^[71] Nevertheless, the Gilbert and Sullivan operas continue to be produced frequently today throughout the English-speaking world and beyond, and Carte's vision of wholesome light operas that celebrate Great Britain endures.^[72][73][74]

[edit] Compositions

[edit] Operettas

• Dr. Ambrosius – His Secret (1868)
• Marie (1871), with librettist E. Spencer Mott
• Happy Hampstead (1876), with librettist Frank Desprez

[edit] Songs

Carte's Parlour songs include:

• "Come Back to Me", words and music by Carte.^[75]
• "Diamond Eyes", words by L. H. F. du Terraux.^[76]
• "The Maiden's Watch", words by Amy Thornton, composed for and sung by Adelaide Newton
• "The Mountain Boy", sung by Florence Lancia
• "Pourquoi?" Chansonette, dedicated to Selina Dolaro
• "Questions", words by Desprez
• "Stars of the Summer Night", Serenade, with poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• "Twilight", Canzonet
• "Waiting", words by Adelaide Procter.^[77]
• "Why so pale and wan, fond lover"^[78]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Ainger, Michael (2002). Gilbert and Sullivan – A Dual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195147693. 
• Baily, Leslie (1966). The Gilbert and Sullivan Book (new ed. ed.). London: Spring Books. 
• Fitz-Gerald, S. J. Adair (1924). The Story of the Savoy Opera. London: Stanley Paul & Co. 
• Gänzl, Kurt. The British musical theatre, 2 vols. (1986)
• Goodman, Andrew: Gilbert and Sullivan’s London, Spellmount Ltd, London, 1988, ISBN 0-946771-31-6
• Hibbert, Christopher (1976). Gilbert & Sullivan and Their Victorian World. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc. 
• Jacobs, Arthur (1986). Arthur Sullivan – A Victorian Musician. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-282033-8. 
• Joseph, Tony (1994). D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 1875-1982: An Unofficial History. London: Bunthorne Books.  ISBN 0-950-79921-1
• Mander, Raymond and Joe Mitchenson (1968). Lost Theatres of London, Hart Davis Macgibbon. ISBN 0246644702
• Rollins, Cyril; R. John Witts (1961). The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas. London: Michael Joseph, Ltd.  (and four supplements published in 1966, 1971, 1976, and 1983)
• Seeley, Paul. "Who Was Helen Lenoir?", The Savoyard, September 1982 - Vol XXI No. 2
• Stedman, Jane W. (1996). W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Victorian & His Theatre. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816174-3. 
• Wilson, Robin; Frederic Lloyd (1984). Gilbert & Sullivan – The Official D'Oyly Carte Picture History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 
• The Stage, 4 April 1901
• The Stage, 11 April 1901

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Richard D'Oyly Carte

• Article on the Carte family
• Biography of Richard D'Oyly Carte
• Article on Richard D'Oyly Carte
• Profile of Richard D'Oyly Carte
• Account of the "Fracas at the Opera Comique" in 1879

v • d • e Gilbert and Sullivan   The Triumvirate W. S. Gilbert • Arthur Sullivan • Richard D'Oyly Carte   The Gilbert and Sullivan operas Thespis • Trial by Jury • The Sorcerer • H.M.S. Pinafore • The Pirates of Penzance • Patience • Iolanthe • Princess Ida The Mikado • Ruddigore • The Yeomen of the Guard • The Gondoliers • Utopia, Limited • The Grand Duke   Other works, people and related matters Other works by W. S. Gilbert • Other operas by Arthur Sullivan • Other music by Arthur Sullivan • Savoy opera People associated with Gilbert and Sullivan • Gilbert and Sullivan performers D'Oyly Carte Opera Company • Helen Carte • Rupert D'Oyly Carte • Bridget D'Oyly Carte Cultural influence of Gilbert and Sullivan • International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival G&S Portal