Gilbert and Sullivan
|
|
Playwright/lyricist William S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur S. Sullivan (1842-1900) defined operetta in Victorian England with a series of their internationally successful and timeless works known as the Savoy Operas.
| Contents |
History
Their first collaboration was Thespis (1871). At the time, W. S. Gilbert was widely known for the Bab Ballads, a popular series of doggerel verse that explored the farthest reaches of topsy-turvydom, such as the ballad of Captain Reece, whose "sisters, cousins, aunts and niece" sailed on the H.M.S. Mantelpiece. He was a successful man of the London theatrical scene, with a string of sketches, comedies, pantomimes, burlesques and musicals which were accounted successful by the standards of the day. Arthur Sullivan was the most popular musician in England and regarded as the bright young hope of serious British music. He was much in demand as a conductor and composer of oratorios, anthems and hymns. He was also earning a considerable income by churning out popular ballads, the Victorian equivalent of Top Forty hits.
Thespis was an extravaganza in which the gods of the classical world, now become elderly, were temporarily replaced by a troupe of Nineteenth Century actors and actresses. In concept, the piece was consistent with the Offenbachian Orpheus in the Underworld and The Beautiful Helen which (in translation) then dominated the English musical stage. Thespis had a run estimated at between 64 and 80 performances at the small and not especially attractive Opera Comique Theatre. It was successful as such things were then measured, even moderately profitable, but perceived by no one at the time as the beginning of a great collaboration. The musical score was never published and, except for one song and one chorus, has entirely perished. However, some of the music was recycled by the collaborators into later works. Composers since then have attempted to fill in the gaps by supplying "Sullivan-like" music for the play. [1] (http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/thespis/html/thespis_home.html)
Gilbert and Sullivan's first major hit was Trial by Jury (1875). Impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte had hit on the idea of creating an English national opera. He asked W. S. Gilbert for a one-act work to serve as an afterpiece for Offenbach's popular but short La Perichole. Gilbert had already written just such a short piece on commission from another producer, whose unexpected death had left Gilbert's work an orphan. He extracted the libretto of Trial by Jury from his pocket and handed it to Carte. Carte was delighted with it. He suggested that it be set to music by Sullivan and he brought the two men together. Sullivan was equally delighted. Trial by Jury, with Sullivan's brother, Fred, as the Learned Judge, was added to the bill with La Perichole and proved itself to be even more popular than Offenbach's work. Trial by Jury ran for 135 performances, a new record for an English musical, far outdistancing the former record holder, The Beggar's Opera (1728).
The Sorcerer (1877) is the first full-length example of what came to be known as the Savoy operas (although the Savoy Theatre had yet to be built.) D'Oyly Carte asked Gilbert for a comic operetta that would serve as the centerpiece for an evening's entertainment. Gilbert rummaged around in his published comic verse and hit on the tale of a respectable Cockney businessman who happened to be a sorcerer, a purveyer of blessings (not much called for) and curses (very popular).
With The Sorcerer, the D'Oyly Carte repertory and production system came into being. Until this time, Gilbert had been forced to contend with casts built around one or two established stars, as had been the case with Thespis, a casually collected group of supporting players and a pick-up band of musicians. From The Sorcerer onwards, Gilbert would no longer hire stars, he would create them. Gilbert hired the performers, subject to veto from Sullivan on purely musical grounds. He oversaw the designs of sets and costumes. He directed the performers on stage. Sullivan oversaw musical preparation.
The result of all this was a wholly new crispness and polish in English musical theater. A side-effect was that all subsequent Gilbert and Sullivan comic operettas with the exception of The Gondoliers, would have interchangeable casts. The repertory system insured that the comic patter man who would perform the role of the sorcerous John Wellington Wells, would go from his desk to be ruler of the Queen's navy as Sir Joseph Porter, then join the army as Major General Stanley and so on. Lady Sangazure would transform into Little Buttercup, then Ruth, the piratical maid-of-all-work . . . Two relative unknowns hired by Gilbert for The Sorcerer would stay with his opera company for many years to become great stars of the Victorian stage, George Grossmith, a comic patter man, and Rutland Barrington, baritone and character actor. Gilbert was a tireless taskmaster, seeing to it that The Sorcerer opened as a fully polished show--in marked contrast to the under-rehearsed Thespis.
Their first world-wide success was with HMS Pinafore (1878), satirizing the Royal Navy and the British obsession with social status. The Pirates of Penzance (1879), written in a fit of pique at American copyright pirates, also poked fun at romantic melodrama, sense of duty, family obligation, and the relevance of a liberal education. Patience (1881) satirized the aesthetic movement in general and the poet and aesthete Oscar Wilde in particular. Iolanthe (1882) pokes fun at English law and at the House of Lords. Ruddigore (1887) is a topsy-turvy take on the Victorian Melodrama, and viciously satirizes that entire genre. The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), their only joint work with a tragic ending, concerns a strolling jester who finds himself embroiled in a risky intrigue at the Tower of London. The Gondoliers (1889) pokes fun at the plot devices of opera in the setting of a kingdom ruled by a pair of gondoliers who try to run it in a spirit of "republican equality". Trial By Jury is rather self-evident, but is unique because it was the only operetta with no spoken dialogue. Their most popular work was The Mikado (1885), where English bureaucracy was made fun of in a Japanese setting.
Gilbert's plots remain perfect examples of "topsy-turvydom," in which primeval fairies rub elbows with English lords, gondoliers ascend to the monarchy and pirates reconcile with majors general. Gilbert's lyrics employ double (and triple) rhyming and punning, and served as the very model for such 20th century Broadway lyricists as Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart. Sullivan, a classically trained musician who devoted much of his career to religious hymns and grand opera, contributed catchy melodies which were also emotionally moving. As seamless as their onstage collaboration was, Gilbert and Sullivan were temperamentally incompatible, and their partnership was frequently ruptured. Their last joint work, The Grand Duke, opened in 1896, and the sickly Sullivan died four years later.
Their works were originally produced by British impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte, considered by some to be the third member of this partnership, who built the Savoy Theatre in London to present their operettas, and formed the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which would perform the Savoy Operettas with exacting detail until 1982. The Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were even more popular abroad, and many American cities saw amateur and professional Gilbert and Sullivan performing groups. This trend has continued to the present day, and it can be argued that these operettas and The Mikado in particular were instrumental in shaping the American musical of the 20th century.
Cultural influence
Many cultural movements saw the influence of Gilbert and Sullivan. For instance, aestheticism, the cultural movement characterized by Oscar Wilde and satirized in Patience, was actually introduced to the United States by Richard D'Oyly Carte in order that Americans could understand the operetta. In terms of humor, the idea of extending a joke throughout a piece of literature and/or comedy work is prevalent in the Savoy Operas.
In 1999 Mike Leigh's film Topsy-Turvy presented an acclaimed film depiction of the team and the creation of their most popular operetta, The Mikado.
The works of Gilbert and Sullivan, filled as they are with parodies of their contemporary culture, are themselves frequently parodied or pastiched; a notable example of this is Tom Lehrer's Elements song, which consists of Lehrer's rhyming rendition of the names of all the chemical elements set to the music of Major General's Song from the operetta The Pirates of Penzance. Lehrer also includes a verse parodying a Gilbert and Sullivan finale in his patchwork of stylistic creations Clementine ("full of words and music and signifying nothing", as Lehrer put it, thus parodying G & S and Shakespeare in the same sentence).
The Popeye theme song was apparently directly inspired by G & S. The first two phrases
- I'm Popeye the Sailor Man, I'm Popeye the Sailor Man
are nearly identical to the first two phrases of the "Pirate King" song from The Pirates of Penzance
- For I am a Pirate King! (Hoorah for the Pirate King!)
except for the high note on the first "King".
Another song from "Pirates", which starts "With cat-like tread..." leads up to a segment that starts "Come, friends who plough the sea..." which is more recognizable with its modern lyric, "Hail, hail, the gang's all here..."
Allan Sherman sang several parodies...
- I'm called Little Butterball (about Allan's admitted corpulence)
- When I was a lad I went to Yale (about a young advertising agent)
- Titwillow (about a Yiddish-talking bird that meets a sad fate)
In Runaround, a short story in Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, Powell and Donovan encounter a robot who is in a state similar to drunkenness, singing "There Grew a Little Flower" (from Ruddigore), upon which Donovan remarks "Where did he pick up Gilbert and Sullivan"?
In the early 1980s, around the time of the straight version of "Pirates" starring Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt, there was a parody (or "updated") film called The Pirate Movie starring Christopher Atkins and Kristy McNichol. The film Chariots of Fire also draws much from the G & S repertoire.
The popular TV series Family Guy drew from Gilbert and Sullivan with a parody of the Captain's Song from H.M.S. Pinafore. Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm uses Three Little Maids from The Mikado as background music. In The Simpsons episode "Cape Fear" Bart asks Sideshow Bob to sing "the entire score of H.M.S. Pinafore" as a last request, which is fulfilled. In the ninth Star Trek feature film Star Trek: Insurrection the characters Captain Picard, Worf and Data sing "A British Tar". The character Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark sings Pinafore tunes when he is excited or overjoyed.
Collaborations
- Thespis, or, The Gods Grown Old (1871)
- Trial by Jury (1875)
- The Sorcerer (1877)
- HMS 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)
- 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)
Well-known Gilbert & Sullivan actors
- Rutland Barrington
- Jessie Bond
- Leonora Braham
- W.H. Denny
- Martyn Green
- George Grossmith
- Marion Hood
- Durward Lely
- Henry Lytton
- Walter Passmore
- Courice Pounds
- Peter Pratt
- John Reed
- Thomas Round
- Frederick Sullivan
- Richard Temple
- C.H. Workman
See also
- George Baker (record singer)
- Edward German
- The International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival held annually
- Staveley, Cumbria - a village with a fifty year G&S tradition
External links
- The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive (http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/)
- Article by H. L. Mencken on the impact of The Mikado from 1910) (http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/mikado/html/mikado_by_mencken.html)
- The New England Gilbert and Sullivan Society (includes links to other North American societies) (http://negass.org/index.html)
- Savoynet - an email-based G&S listserv (http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/savoynet)
- Manchester Universities' Gilbert & Sullivan Society (includes links to other G&S resources) (http://www.mugss.org/)
- University of York Gilbert and Sullivan Society (includes links to other societies and G&S resources) (http://www.gsyork.co.uk/)
Sources
- Lelie Bailey, The Gilbert and Sullivan Book, 3rd ed, London. 1953.
- John Lane, The Life of Jessie Bond, London, 1927.
- Arthur Lawrence, Sir Arthur Sullivan, London, 1899.
- Deems Taylor (preface), Plays and Poems of W. S. Gilbert, New York, 1932.