Gilbert and Sullivan

W. S. Gilbert

Arthur Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian era partnership of librettist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). Together, they wrote fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado are the best known.

Gilbert, who wrote the words, created fanciful topsy-turvy worlds for these operas, where each absurdity is taken to its logical conclusion—fairies rub elbows with English lords, flirting is a capital offence, gondoliers ascend to the monarchy, and pirates turn out to be noblemen who have gone wrong. Sullivan, seven years younger than Gilbert, composed the music, contributing memorable melodies that could convey both humour and pathos.

Producer Richard D'Oyly Carte brought Gilbert and Sullivan together and continued to nurture their collaboration, producing a new comic opera whenever the previous one closed. He built the Savoy Theatre in 1881 to present their joint works—which came to be known as the Savoy Operas—and he founded the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which performed and promoted their works for over a century.

The Gilbert and Sullivan operas have enjoyed broad and enduring international success and are still performed frequently today throughout the English-speaking world. The collaboration introduced innovations in content and form that directly influenced the development of musical theatre through the 20th century.

Beginnings

Gilbert before Sullivan

Further information: [[:W. S. Gilbert]]

Gilbert was born in London on November 18, 1836. His father William was a naval surgeon who later wrote novels and short stories, some of which included illustrations by his son. In 1861, the younger Gilbert began to write illustrated stories, poems and articles of his own to supplement his income. Many of these would later be mined as a source of ideas for his plays and operas, particularly his series of illustrated poems called the Bab Ballads.

One of Gilbert's illustrations for his Bab Ballad "Gentle Alice Brown"

In the Bab Ballads and his early plays, Gilbert developed a unique "topsy-turvy" style, where the humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. Mike Leigh describes the "Gilbertian" style as follows: "With great fluidity and freedom, [Gilbert] continually challenges our natural expectations. First, within the framework of the story, he makes bizarre things happen, and turns the world on its head. Thus the Learned Judge marries the Plaintiff, the soldiers metamorphose into aesthetes, and so on, and nearly every opera is resolved by a deft moving of the goalposts.... His genius is to fuse opposites with an imperceptible sleight of hand, to blend the surreal with the real, and the caricature with the natural. In other words, to tell a perfectly outrageous story in a completely deadpan way."

Gilbert developed his innovative theories on the art of stage direction, following theatrical reformer Tom Robertson. Theatre in Britain, at that time Gilbert began writing, was in disrepute, and Gilbert helped to reform and elevate the respectability of the theatre, especially beginning with his six short family-friendly comic operas, or "entertainments," for Thomas German Reed. Gilbert's many early musical plays were a proving ground for developing his style of writing lyrics.

At a rehearsal for one of these entertainments, Ages Ago (1869), the composer Frederic Clay introduced Gilbert to his friend, the young composer Arthur Sullivan. Two years later, Gilbert and Sullivan would write their first work together. Those two intervening years were very productive for Gilbert and continued to shape his theatrical style. He continued to write humorous verse, stories and plays, including the comic operas Our Island Home (1870) and A Sensation Novel (1871), and the blank verse comedies The Princess (1870), The Palace of Truth (1870), and Pygmalion and Galatea. Gilbert would later find inspiration in many of his early plays and operas for the collaborations with Sullivan.

Sullivan before Gilbert

Further information: [[:Arthur Sullivan]]

The Crystal Palace, where several early Sullivan works premiered

Sullivan was born in London on May 13 1842. His father was a military bandmaster, and by the time Arthur had reached the age of 8, he was proficient with all the instruments in the band. In school he began to compose anthems and songs. In 1856, he received the first Mendelssohn prize and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and at Leipzig, where he also took up conducting. His graduation piece, completed in 1861, was a suite of incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest. Revised and expanded, it was performed at the Crystal Palace in 1862 and was an immediate sensation. He began building a reputation as England's most promising young composer, composing a symphony, a concerto, and several overtures, among them the Overture di Ballo, in 1870.

His early major works for the voice included The Masque at Kenilworth (1864); an oratorio, The Prodigal Son (1869); and a dramatic cantata, On Shore and Sea (1871). He composed a ballet, L'Île Enchantée and incidental music for a number of Shakespeare plays. Other early pieces that were praised were his Symphony in E, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, and Overture in C (In Memoriam) (all three of which premiered in 1866). These commissions, however, were not sufficient to keep Sullivan afloat. He worked as a church organist and composed numerous hymns, popular songs, and parlour ballads.

Sullivan's first foray into comic opera was Cox and Box (1866), written with librettist F. C. Burnand for an informal gathering of friends. Public performance followed, with W. S. Gilbert (then writing dramatic criticism for Fun) saying that Sullivan's score "is, in many places, of too high a class for the grotesquely absurd plot to which it is wedded." Sullivan and Burnand followed their success with a second comic opera, The Contrabandista (1867).

Operas

First collaborations: Thespis and Trial by Jury

A contemporary illustration of Thespis from The Illustrated London News of January 6, 1872

In 1871, producer John Hollingshead brought Gilbert and Sullivan together to produce a Christmas entertainment, Thespis, at his Gaiety Theatre, a large West End house.

In Thespis the gods of the classical world, who have become elderly and ignored by the mortals who are supposed to worship them, are temporarily replaced by a troupe of actors and actresses. The piece echoed and may even have borrowed from Orpheus in the Underworld and La belle Hélène, two of Offenbach's mixtures of political satire and grand opera parody, which (in translation) then dominated the English musical stage. Thespis opened on Boxing Day and ran for 63 performances. Gilbert directed the production himself, as he did all of the G&S operas. Unlike the later G&S works, however, Thespis was hastily prepared and of a more risqué nature, like Gilbert's earlier travesties, with a broader style of comedy that allowed for improvisation by the actors. Two of the male characters were played by women, whose shapely legs were put on display in a fashion that Gilbert later condemned. The musical score to Thespis was never published and is now lost, except for one song that was published separately, a chorus that was re-used in The Pirates of Penzance, and the Act II ballet. There have been numerous revivals, either with original scores or adaptations of Sullivan's other music.

Thespis outran five of its nine competitors for the 1871 holiday season and was later revived for a benefit performance. No one at the time, however, anticipated that this was the beginning of a great collaboration, and Gilbert and Sullivan did not have occasion to work together for another four years. Gilbert worked with Clay on Happy Arcadia (1872) and with Alfred Cellier on Topsyturveydom (1874), as well as writing several other libretti, farces, extravaganzas, fairy comedies, dramas, adaptations from novels, and translations from the French. Sullivan completed his Festival Te Deum (1872), another oratorio, The Light of the World (1873), his only song cycle The Window; or, The Song of the Wrens (1871), incidental music to The Merry Wives of Windsor (1874) and more hymns, including "Onward, Christian Soldiers" (1872), songs and parlour ballads. In short, during these years, each man became more eminent in his field.

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"Now, Jurymen, take my advice": Trial by Jury

By early 1875, Richard D'Oyly Carte was managing the Royalty Theatre, and he needed a short opera to be played as an afterpiece to Offenbach's La Périchole. Gilbert had already written such a short piece on commission from producer-composer Carl Rosa, whose wife's unexpected 1874 death in childbirth had left the libretto an orphan (she had been expected to sing the role of the leading character). This piece is one of Gilbert’s humorous spoofs of the law and the legal profession, based on his brief experience as a barrister. It concerns a breach of promise of marriage suit, where the defendant argues that damages should be slight, since "he is such a very bad lot," and the plaintiff argues that she loves the defendant fervently, and her loss will be great. Gilbert had shopped the piece to Carte in 1874, and now Carte contacted Gilbert to suggest that it be set to music by Sullivan. Sullivan was delighted with it, and Trial by Jury was composed in a matter of weeks.

The little piece, starring Sullivan's brother, Fred, as the Learned Judge, was a runaway hit, outlasting the run of La Périchole and being revived at two other theatres and enjoyed a provincial tour.

Sorcerer to Pirates

An early poster showing scenes from The Sorcerer, Pinafore, and Trial by Jury

The Sorcerer (1877) was the first full-length example of what came to be known as the Savoy Operas (a term that refers to the Savoy Theatre in London, which would be built in 1881 by Richard D'Oyly Carte to present the operas). Carte, who was now interested in developing an English form of light opera that would displace the bawdy burlesques and badly translated French operettas then dominating the London stage, asked Gilbert for a comic opera that would serve as the centrepiece for an evening's entertainment. Gilbert found a subject in one of his short stories, "The Elixir of Love", which concerned a Cockney businessman who happened to be a sorcerer, a purveyor of blessings (not much called for) and curses (very popular). Gilbert and Sullivan were tireless taskmasters, seeing to it that The Sorcerer opened as a fully polished production at the Opera Comique, in marked contrast to the under-rehearsed Thespis. The success of the piece established the triumvirate of Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte as an entity that would survive through a dozen more collaborations.

With The Sorcerer, the D'Oyly Carte repertory and production system came into being. Previously, Gilbert had constructed his plays around the established stars of whatever theatre he happened to be writing for, as had been the case with Thespis. From The Sorcerer onwards, Gilbert would no longer hire stars; he would create them. He and Sullivan selected the performers, writing their operas for ensemble casts rather than individual stars. Gilbert oversaw the designs of sets and costumes, and he directed the performers on stage. He sought realism in acting, shunned self-conscious interaction with the audience, and insisted on a standard of characterisation where the characters were never aware of their own absurdity, but were coherent internal wholes. Gilbert insisted that his actors know their words perfectly and obey his stage directions, which was something quite new to many actors of the day. Sullivan personally oversaw the musical preparation. The result was a new crispness and polish in the English musical theatre.

The libretto of The Sorcerer relied on stock character types, many of which were familiar from European opera: the heroic protagonist (tenor) and his love-interest (soprano); the elderly woman with fading charms (contralto – these were also modelled on Priscilla German Reed); the bewildered lyric baritone – a priest, or the girl's father; and a supporting bass-baritone or two. The "patter" (comic) baritone was often the leading role of their comic operas. This character usually sings the speedy patter songs. The first G&S patter man was Sullivan's brother, Fred, who had played the Learned Judge in Trial, but who died before Sorcerer was written. F. C. Burnand wrote that he "was one of the most naturally comic little men I ever came across. He, too, was a first-rate practical musician.... As he was the most absurd person, so was he the very kindliest...." Fred's creation would serve as a model for the rest of the collaborators' works, and each of them has a crucial comic little man role, as Burnand had put it. Finally, Gilbert and Sullivan fully integrated the male and female choruses into the action, making them, collectively, as important as any principal character.

The repertory system ensured that the comic patter character who would perform the role of the sorcerer, John Wellington Wells, would become the ruler of the Queen's navy as Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore, then join the army as Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance, and so on. Similarly, Mrs. Partlet in The Sorcerer would transform into Little Buttercup in Pinafore, then into Ruth, the piratical maid-of-all-work in Pirates. Relatively unknown performers whom Gilbert and Sullivan engaged for The Sorcerer and Pinafore would stay with the company for many years, becoming stars of the Victorian stage. These included George Grossmith, the comic baritone; Rutland Barrington, the lyric baritone; Richard Temple, the bass-baritone; Jessie Bond, the mezzo-soprano soubrette; and Rosina Brandram, the contralto.>

The Pirate King

Gilbert and Sullivan scored their first international hit with H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), satirising the rise of unqualified people to positions of authority and poking good-natured fun at the Royal Navy and the English obsession with social status (building on a theme introduced in The Sorcerer, love between members of different social classes). As with many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a surprise twist changes everything dramatically near the end of the story. Pinafore ran in London for 571 performances,the second longest run of any musical theatre piece in history up to that time (after the operetta Les Cloches de Corneville). Hundreds of unauthorized, or "pirated", productions of Pinafore appeared in America. Richard D'Oyly Carte split up with his former investors during the run of Pinafore. The disgruntled former partners, who had each invested in the production with no return, staged a public fracas, sending a group of thugs to seize the scenery during a performance. Stagehands successfully managed to ward off their backstage attackers. Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan formed the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which then produced all of their succeeding operas.

The Pirates of Penzance (New Year's eve, 1879), conceived in a fit of pique at the American copyright pirates, also poked fun at grand opera conventions, sense of duty, family obligation, the "respectability" of civilisation and the peerage, and the relevance of a liberal education. The story also revisits Pinafore's theme of unqualified people in positions of authority, in the person of the "modern major-general" who has up-to-date knowledge about everything except the military. The piece premiered first in New York rather than London, in an (unsuccessfully) attempt to secure the American copyright, and was another big success with both critics and audiences. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte tried for many years to control the American performance copyrights over their operas, without success. Pirates enjoyed a successful 1981 Broadway revival by Joseph Papp.

In 1880, Sullivan wrote the cantata The Martyr of Antioch, presented at the Leeds Triennial Music Festival, with a libretto modified by Gilbert from an 1822 epic poem by Henry Hart Milman concerning the martyrdom of St. Margaret of Antioch in the 3rd century. Sullivan became the conductor of the Leeds festival beginning in 1880 and conducted the performance. It could be said that Martyr was the 15th opera of the partnership, since the Carl Rosa Opera Company presented the work as an opera in 1898.

Savoy Theatre opens: Patience to Princess Ida

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Grossmith as Bunthorne in Patience

Patience (1881) satirized the aesthetic movement in general and the poet Algernon Swinburne in particular, as well as male vanity and chauvinism in the military. During the run of Patience, Carte built the large, modern Savoy Theatre, which became the partnership's permanent home. It was the first theatre (indeed the world's first public building) to be lit entirely by electric lighting. Patience moved into the Savoy after six months at the Opera Comique and ran for a total of 578 performances, surpassing the run of H.M.S. Pinafore and becoming the second longest-running work of musical theatre up to that time in history.

Iolanthe (1882) was the first of the operas to open at the Savoy. The fully electric Savoy made possible numerous special effects, such as sparkling magic wands for the female chorus of fairies. The opera poked fun at English law and the House of Lords and made much of the war between the sexes. The critics felt that Sullivan's work in Iolanthe had taken a step forward. The Daily Telegraph wrote, "The composer has risen to his opportunity, and we are disposed to account Iolanthe his best effort in all the Gilbertian series." Similarly, the Theatre asserted that "the music of Iolanthe is Dr Sullivan's chef d'oeuvre. The quality throughout is more even, and maintained at a higher standard, than in any of his earlier works...."

Iolanthe is one of a number of Gilbert's works, including The Wicked World (1873), Broken Hearts (1875), Princess Ida (1884) and Fallen Fairies (1909), where the introduction of men and "mortal love" into a tranquil world of women wreaks havoc with the status quo. Gilbert had created several "fairy comedies" at the Haymarket Theatre in the early 1870s. These plays, influenced by the fairy work of James Planché, are founded upon the idea of self-revelation by characters under the influence of some magic or some supernatural interference.

Alice Barnett as The Fairy Queen

In 1882, Gilbert had a telephone installed in his home and at the prompt desk at the Savoy Theatre so that he could monitor performances and rehearsals from his home study. Gilbert had referred to the new technology in Pinafore in 1878, only two years after the device was invented and before London even had telephone service. Sullivan had one installed as well, and on May 13 1883, at a party to celebrate the composer's 41st birthday, the guests, including the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), heard a direct relay of parts of Iolanthe from the Savoy. This was probably the first live "broadcast" of an opera.

During the run of Iolanthe, in 1883, Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria. Although it was the operas with Gilbert that had earned him the broadest fame, the honour was conferred for his services to serious music. The musical establishment, and many critics, believed that this should put an end to his career as a composer of comic opera — that a musical knight should not stoop below oratorio or grand opera. Sullivan, despite the financial security of writing for the Savoy, increasingly viewed his work with Gilbert as unimportant, beneath his skills, and repetitious. Furthermore, he was unhappy that he had to simplify his music to ensure that Gilbert's words could be heard. But paradoxically, in February 1883, just after Iolanthe opened, Sullivan had signed a five-year agreement with Gilbert and Carte requiring him to produce a new comic opera on six months' notice.

Princess Ida (1884) spoofed women's education and male chauvinism and continued the theme from Iolanthe of the war between the sexes. The opera is based on Tennyson's poem The Princess: A Medley. Gilbert had written a blank verse farce based on the same material in 1870, called The Princess, and he reused a good deal of the dialogue from his earlier play in the libretto of Princess Ida. Ida is the only Gilbert and Sullivan work with dialogue entirely in blank verse and is also the only one of their works in three acts. Lillian Russell had been engaged to create the title role, but Gilbert did not believe that she was dedicated enough, and when she missed a rehearsal, she was dismissed.

Princess Ida was the first of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas that, by the partnership's previous standards, was not a success. A particularly hot summer in London did not help ticket sales. The piece ran for a comparatively short 246 performances and was not revived in London until 1919. Sullivan had been satisfied with the libretto, but two months after Ida opened, Sullivan told Carte that "it is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself." As Princess Ida showed signs of flagging, Carte realized that, for the first time in the partnership's history, no new opera would be ready when the old one closed. On 22 March 1884, he gave Gilbert and Sullivan contractual notice that a new opera would be required in six months' time. In the meantime, when Ida closed, Carte produced a revival of The Sorcerer.

Dodging the magic lozenge: The Mikado to The Gondoliers

Lithograph of the "Three Little Maids" from The Mikado

The most successful of the Savoy Operas was The Mikado (1885), which made fun of English bureaucracy in a Japanese setting. Gilbert initially proposed a story for a new opera about a magic lozenge that would change the characters, which Sullivan found artificial and lacking in "human interest and probability", as well as being too similar to their earlier opera, The Sorcerer. As dramatized in the film Topsy-Turvy, the author and composer were at an impasse until 8 May 1884, when Gilbert dropped the lozenge idea and agreed to provide a libretto without any supernatural elements. The Mikado became the partnership's biggest success, running at the Savoy Theatre for 672 performances, which was the second longest run for any work of musical theatre and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece up to that time. The Mikado remains the most frequently performed Savoy Opera. It has been translated into numerous languages and is one of the most frequently played musical theatre pieces in history. Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert and Sullivan to satirize British politics and institutions more freely by disguising them as Japanese. Several of the later operas are set in foreign or fictional locales, including The Gondoliers, Utopia Limited, and The Grand Duke, to soften the impact of their pointed satire of British institutions.

Ruddigore (1887), a topsy-turvy take on Victorian melodrama, was less successful than most of the earlier collaborations with a run of 288 performances. The original title, Ruddygore, together with some of the plot devices, including the revivification of ghosts, drew negative comments from critics. Gilbert and Sullivan respelled the title and made a number of changes and cuts. Nevertheless, the piece was profitable, and the reviews were not all bad. For instance, the Illustrated London News praised the work and both Gilbert and, especially, Sullivan: "Sir Arthur Sullivan has eminently succeeded alike in the expression of refined sentiment and comic humour. In the former respect, the charm of graceful melody prevails; while, in the latter, the music of the most grotesque situations is redolent of fun." Further changes were made, including a new overture, when Rupert D'Oyly Carte revived Ruddigore after the First World War, and the piece was regularly performed by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company thereafter. Some of the plot elements of Ruddigore were introduced by Gilbert in his earlier one-act opera, Ages Ago (1869), including the tale of the wicked ancestor and the device of the ancestors stepping out of their portraits. When Ruddigore closed, no new opera was ready. Gilbert again proposed a version of the "lozenge" plot for their next opera, and Sullivan reiterated his desire to leave the partnership. While the two men worked out their artistic differences, Carte produced revivals of such old favourites as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado.

W.H. Denny as Wilfred and Jessie Bond as Phoebe in Yeomen

The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), their only joint work with a serious ending, concerns a pair of strolling players—a jester and a singing girl—who are caught up in a risky intrigue at the Tower of London during the 16th century. The dialogue, though in prose, is quasi-Shakespearian, or early modern English, in style, and there is no satire of British institutions. For some of the plot elements, Gilbert had reached back to his 1875 tragedy, Broken Hearts. The Times praised the libretto: "It should... be acknowledged that Mr. Gilbert has earnestly endeavoured to leave familiar grooves and rise to higher things." Although not a grand opera, the new libretto provided Sullivan with the opportunity to write his most ambitious score to date. The critics, who had recently lauded the composer for his successful oratorio, The Golden Legend, considered the score to Yeomen to be Sullivan's finest, including its overture, which was written in sonata form, rather than as a sequential pot-pourri of tunes from the opera, as in most of his other overtures. The Daily Telegraph wrote:

The accompaniments...are delightful to hear, and especially does the treatment of the woodwind compel admiring attention. Schubert himself could hardly have handled those instruments more deftly, written for them more lovingly.... We place the songs and choruses in The Yeomen of the Guard before all his previous efforts of this particular kind. Thus the music follows the book to a higher plane, and we have a genuine English opera....

Yeomen was a hit, running for over a year, with strong New York and touring productions. During the run, on 12 March 1889, Sullivan wrote to Gilbert, "I have lost the liking for writing comic opera, and entertain very grave doubts as to my power of doing it.... You say that in a serious opera, you must more or less sacrifice yourself. I say that this is just what I have been doing in all our joint pieces, and, what is more, must continue to do in comic opera to make it successful." Sullivan insisted that the next opera must be a grand opera. Gilbert did not feel that he could write a grand opera libretto, but he offered a compromise that Sullivan ultimately accepted. The two would write a light opera for the Savoy, and at the same time, Sullivan a grand opera (Ivanhoe) for a new theatre that Carte was constructing to present British grand opera. After a brief impasse over the choice of subject, Sullivan accepted an idea "connected with Venice and Venetian life, as "this seemed to me to hold out great chances of bright colour and taking music."

Pounds and Barrington as Marco and Giuseppe

The Gondoliers (1889) takes place partly in Venice and partly in a kingdom ruled by a pair of gondoliers who attempt to remodel the monarchy in a spirit of "republican equality." Gilbert recapitulates a number of his earlier themes, including the satire of class distinctions figuring in many of his earlier librettos. The libretto also reflects Gilbert's fascination with the "Stock Company Act", highlighting the absurd convergence of natural persons and legal entities, which plays an even larger part in the next opera, Utopia Limited. Press accounts were almost entirely favourable. The Illustrated London News reported:

"...Gilbert has returned to the Gilbert of the past, and everyone is delighted. He is himself again. The Gilbert of The Bab Ballads, the Gilbert of whimsical conceit, inoffensive cynicism, subtle satire, and playful paradox; the Gilbert who invented a school of his own, who in it was schoolmaster and pupil, who has never taught anybody but himself, and is never likely to have any imitator—this is the Gilbert the public want to see, and this is the Gilbert who on Saturday night was cheered till the audience was weary of cheering any more."

Sullivan's old collaborator on Cox and Box (later the editor of Punch magazine), F. C. Burnand, wrote to the composer: "Magnificento!...I envy you and W.S.G. being able to place a piece like this on the stage in so complete a fashion." The opera enjoyed a run longer than any of their other joint works except for H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado. There was a command performance of The Gondoliers for Queen Victoria and the royal family at Windsor Castle in 1891, the first such performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera to be so honoured. Gondoliers was Gilbert and Sullivan's last great success.

The carpet quarrel

Gilbert and Sullivan sometimes had a strained working relationship, partly caused by the fact that each man saw himself allowing his work to be subjugated to the other's, and partly caused by the opposing personalities of the two—Gilbert was often confrontational and notoriously thin-skinned (though prone to acts of extraordinary kindness), while Sullivan eschewed conflict. In addition, Gilbert imbued his libretti with "topsy-turvy" situations in which the social order was turned upside down. After a time, these subjects were often at odds with Sullivan's desire for realism and emotional content. Also, Gilbert's political satire often poked fun at the wealthy and powerful who Sullivan sought out for friendship and patronage.

Gilbert and Sullivan quarrelled several times over the choice of a subject. After both Princess Ida and Ruddigore, which were less successful than the seven other operas from H.M.S. Pinafore through The Gondoliers, Sullivan asked to leave the partnership, saying that he found Gilbert's plots repetitive and that the operas were not artistically satisfying to him. While the two artists worked out their differences, Carte kept the Savoy open with revivals of their earlier works. On each occasion, after a few months' pause, Gilbert responded with a libretto that met Sullivan's objections, and the partnership was able to continue successfully.

Savoy Theatre c.1881

During the run of The Gondoliers, however, Gilbert challenged Carte over the expenses of the production. Carte had charged the cost of a new carpet for the Savoy Theatre lobby to the partnership. Gilbert believed that this was a maintenance expense that should be charged to Carte alone. As scholar Andrew Crowther has explained:

After all, the carpet was only one of a number of disputed items, and the real issue lay not in the mere money value of these things, but in whether Carte could be trusted with the financial affairs of Gilbert and Sullivan. Gilbert contended that Carte had at best made a series of serious blunders in the accounts, and at worst deliberately attempted to swindle the others. It is not easy to settle the rights and wrongs of the issue at this distance, but it does seem fairly clear that there was something very wrong with the accounts at this time. Gilbert wrote to Sullivan on 28 May, 1891, a year after the end of the "Quarrel", that Carte had admitted "an unintentional overcharge of nearly £1,000 in the electric lighting accounts alone."

Sullivan sided with Carte, who was building a theatre in London for the production of new English grand operas, with Sullivan's Ivanhoe as the inaugural work. While the protracted quarrel worked itself out in the courts and in public, Gilbert wrote The Mountebanks with Alfred Cellier and the flop Haste to the Wedding with George Grossmith, and Sullivan also wrote Haddon Hall with Sidney Grundy.

In 1891, after many failed attempts at reconciliation by the pair and their producer, Richard D'Oyly Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan's music publisher, Tom Chappell, stepped in to mediate between two of his most profitable artists, and within two weeks he had succeeded.

Last works and legacy

The drawing room scene from Act II of Utopia

Utopia, Limited (1893), their penultimate opera, was a very modest success, and The Grand Duke (1896) was an outright failure. Neither work entered the "canon" of regularly-performed Gilbert and Sullivan works until the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company made the first complete professional recordings of the two operas in the 1970s. Gilbert also offered a third libretto to Sullivan (His Excellency, 1894), but Gilbert's insistence on casting Nancy McIntosh, his protégée from Utopia, led to Sullivan's refusal.

After The Grand Duke, the partners saw no reason to work together again. Sullivan, by this time in exceedingly poor health, died four years later, although to the end he continued to write new comic operas for the Savoy with other librettists, most successfully The Rose of Persia (1899), and The Emerald Isle (1901) (finished by Edward German after Sullivan's death). Gilbert went into semi-retirement, although he continued to direct revivals of the Savoy Operas and wrote new plays occasionally. He wrote only one more comic opera, Fallen Fairies (1909; music by Edward German), which was not a success. Richard D'Oyly Carte died in 1901, and his widow, Helen, and then his son, Rupert, followed by his granddaughter, Bridget, continued to direct the activities of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which staged revivals of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas until it closed in 1982.

Because of the unusual success of the operas, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company were able, from the start, to license the works to other professional companies, such as the J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company, and to amateur societies. For almost a century, until the British copyrights expired in 1961, and even afterwards, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company influenced productions of the operas worldwide, creating a "performing tradition" for most of the operas that is still referred to today by many directors. D'Oyly Carte produced several attractive recordings of most of the operas, helping to keep them popular through the decades.

Today, numerous professional repertory companies, opera companies, amateur societies, churches, schools and universities continue to produce the works. The most popular G&S works are still performed from time to time by major opera companies, A three-week long International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival is held every August in Buxton, England.

Cultural influence

Main article: Cultural influence of Gilbert and Sullivan

In the past 125 years, Gilbert and Sullivan have pervasively influenced popular culture in the English-speaking world, and lines and quotations from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas have become part of the English language, such as "short, sharp shock", "What never? Well, hardly ever!", "let the punishment fit the crime", and "A policeman's lot is not a happy one". The operas have influenced political style and discourse, literature, film and television, have been widely parodied by humorists.

The American and British musical owes a tremendous debt to G&S, who were admired by and copied by early authors and composers such as Ivan Caryll, Adrian Ross, Lionel Monckton, P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Victor Herbert, and Ivor Novello, and later Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Gilbert's lyrics served as a model for such 20th century Broadway lyricists as Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart. Noel Coward wrote:

I was born into a generation that still took light music seriously. The lyrics and melodies of Gilbert and Sullivan were hummed and strummed into my consciousness at an early age. My father sang them, my mother played them, my nurse, Emma, breathed them through her teeth while she was washing me, dressing me and undressing me and putting me to bed. My aunts and uncles, who were legion, sang them singly and in unison at the slightest provocation....

— Introduction to The Noel Coward Song Book

Gilbert and Sullivan's work provides a rich cultural resource outside of their influence upon musicals. The works of Gilbert and Sullivan are themselves frequently pastiched. Well known examples of this include Tom Lehrer's The Elements, Allan Sherman's and Anna Russell's famous routines, and the animated TV series, Animaniacs' HMS Yakko episode. Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas are commonly referenced in literature, film and television in various ways that include extensive use of Sullivan's music or where action occurs during a performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. There are also a number of Gilbert and Sullivan biopics, such as Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy.

The musical is not, of course, the only cultural form to show the influence of G&S. Even more direct heirs are those witty and satrical songwriters found on both sides of the Atlantic in the twentieth century like Michael Flanders and Donald Swann in the United Kingdom and Tom Lehrer in the United States. The influrence of Gilbert is discernible in a vein of British comedy that runs through John Betjeman's verse via Monty Python and Private Eye to... television series like Yes, Minister... where the emphasis is on wit, irony, and poking fun at the establishment from within it in a way which manages to be both disrespectful of authority and yet cosily comfortable and urbane.

— Ian Bradley, (2005)

It is not surprising, given the focus of Gilbert on politics, that politicians have often found inspiration in these works. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist added gold stripes to his judicial robes after seeing them used by the Lord Chancellor in a production of Iolanthe. Alternatively, Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer is recorded as objecting so strongly to Iolanthe's comic portrayal of Lord Chancellors that he supported moves to disband the office. British politicians, beyond quoting some of the more famous lines, have delivered speeches in the form of Gilbert and Sullivan pastiches. These include Conservative Peter Lilley's speech mimicking the form of "I've got a little list" from The Mikado, listing those he was against, including "sponging socialists" and "young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing queue".

Collaborations

1880 Pirates poster

Major works

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

Parlour ballads

• The Distant Shore (1874)
• The Love that Loves Me Not (1875)
• Sweethearts (1875), based on Gilbert's 1874 play, Sweethearts

Alternative versions

Translations

Gilbert and Sullivan operas have been translated into many languages, including Portuguese, Yiddish, Hebrew, Swedish, Danish, Estonian, Spanish (reportedly including a version of Pinafore transformed into zarzuela style), and many others.

There are many German versions of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including the popular Der Mikado. There is even a German version of The Grand Duke. Some German translations were made by Friedrich Zell and Richard Genée, librettists of Die Fledermaus, Eine Nacht in Venedig and other Viennese operettas, who even translated one of Sullivan's lesser-known operas, The Chieftain, as ("Der Häuptling").

Ballets

• Pirates of Penzance - The Ballet! (formerly called Pirates! The Ballet)
• Pineapple Poll - from a story by Gilbert - and music by Sullivan

Adaptations

• The Swing Mikado (1938; Chicago - all-black cast)
• The Hot Mikado (1939) and Hot Mikado (1986)
• The Jazz Mikado
• The Black Mikado
• Hollywood Pinafore (1945)
• The Cool Mikado (1962)
• The Pirate Movie (1982), starring Christopher Atkins and Kristy McNichol.
• The Ratepayers' Iolanthe (1984; Olivier Award-winning musical)
• Di Yam Gazlonim by Al Grand (1985; a Yiddish adaptation of Pirates; a New York production was nominated for a 2007 Drama Desk Award)
• Pirates of Penzance - The Ballet! (1991)
• Parson's Pirates by Opera della Luna (2002)
• The Ghosts of Ruddigore by Opera della Luna (2003)

See also

• D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
• Gilbert and Sullivan performers
• People associated with Gilbert and Sullivan
• The International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, held annually in Buxton, England

References

• Ainger, Michael (2002). Gilbert and Sullivan, a Dual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Allen, Reginald (1975). The First Night Gilbert and Sullivan. London: Chappell & Co. Ltd.
• Ayre, Leslie (1972). The Gilbert & Sullivan Companion. London: W.H. Allen & Co Ltd. Introduction by Martyn Green.
• Baily, Leslie (1966). The Gilbert and Sullivan Book (new ed. ed.). London: Spring Books. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Benford, Harry (1999). The Gilbert & Sullivan Lexicon, 3rd Revised Edition. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The Queensbury Press. ISBN 0-9667916-1-4
• Bradley, Ian (1996). The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
• Bradley, Ian C (2005). Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! The Enduring Phenomenon of Gilbert and Sullivan. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195167007.
• Cellier, François and Cunningham Bridgeman (1914). Gilbert and Sullivan and Their Operas. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & sons, ltd. This book is available online at Google books. Retrieved on 2007-06-10.
• Fitzgerald, Percy Hetherington (1899). The Savoy Opera and the Savoyards. London: Chatto & Windus. This book is available online at Google books. Retrieved on 2007-06-10.
• Gilbert, W. S. (1994). The Savoy Operas. Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
• Jacobs, Arthur (1992). Arthur Sullivan – A Victorian Musician (Second Edition ed.). Portland, OR: Amadeus Press. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Stedman, Jane W. (1996). W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Victorian & His Theatre. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816174-3.
• Williamson, Audrey (1953). Gilbert and Sullivan Opera. London: Marion Boyars.
• Wolfson, John (1976). Final curtain: The last Gilbert and Sullivan Operas. London: Chappell in association with A. Deutsch. ISBN 0-903443-12-0

Further reading

• Gilbert, W. S. (1932). Deems Taylor, ed. (ed.). Plays and Poems of W. S. Gilbert. New York: Random House. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Gilbert, W. S. (1976). The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

External links

General and music links

• The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive
• Links to reviews and analysis of numerous recordings of "G&S Derived Works"
• Historical survey of G&S
• Savoynet - an email-based G&S listserv
• G&S Archive MIDI homepage
• The Gilbert and Sullivan Discography
• MP3 files of music from The Pirates of Penzance 2002 performance by The Manchester University Gilbert & Sullivan Society
• MP3 files of music from The Mikado 1998 performance by The Manchester University Gilbert & Sullivan Society

Appreciation society and performing group link

• The Gilbert and Sullivan Society, London
• The New England Gilbert and Sullivan Society (includes links to other North American societies)
• The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of New York
• G&S Archive "Performing Groups" page Comprehensive listing of performing companies.