Gilbert and Sullivan were a Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known. The producer Richard D'Oyly Carte brought Gilbert and Sullivan together and nurtured their collaboration. He built the Savoy Theatre in 1881 to present their joint works (which came to be known as the Savoy Operas) and founded the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which performed and promoted Gilbert and Sullivan's works for more than a century.
Gilbert, who wrote the witty, satiric libretti for these operas, created fanciful "topsy-turvy" worlds where each absurdity is taken to its logical conclusion: 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. Sullivan, six years Gilbert's junior, composed the music, contributing memorable melodies that could convey both humour and pathos.
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.
Beginnings
thumb|right|One of Gilbert's illustrations for his [[Bab Ballads|Bab Ballad "Gentle Alice Brown"]]
Gilbert before Sullivan
Gilbert was born in London on 18 November 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, to supplement his income, the younger Gilbert began writing illustrated stories, poems and articles of his own, many of which would later be mined as inspiration for his plays and operas, particularly Gilbert's series of illustrated poems, the Bab Ballads.
In the Bab Ballads and his early plays, Gilbert developed a unique "topsy-turvy" style in which humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. Director and playwright Mike Leigh described the "Gilbertian" style as follows:
Jessie Bond wrote later:
H.M.S. Pinafore ran in London for 571 performances, an exceptional run for the period. Hundreds of unauthorised, or "pirated", productions of Pinafore appeared in America. During the run of Pinafore, Richard D'Oyly Carte split up with his former investors. The disgruntled former partners, who had invested in the production with no return, staged a public fracas, sending a group of thugs to seize the scenery during a performance. Stagehands managed to ward off their backstage attackers. This event cleared the way for Carte, in alliance with Gilbert and Sullivan, to form the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which then produced all their succeeding operas.
The libretto of H.M.S. Pinafore relied on stock character types, many of which were familiar from European opera (and some of which grew out of Gilbert's earlier association with the German Reeds): the heroic protagonist (tenor) and his love-interest (soprano); the older woman with a secret or a sharp tongue (contralto); the baffled lyric baritone – the girl's father; and a classic villain (bass-baritone). Gilbert and Sullivan added the element of the comic patter-singing character. With the success of H.M.S. Pinafore, the D'Oyly Carte repertory and production system was cemented, and each opera would make use of these stock character types. Before The Sorcerer, 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 and Trial by Jury. Building on the team he had assembled for The Sorcerer, Gilbert no longer hired stars; he created them. He and Sullivan selected the performers, writing their operas for ensemble casts rather than individual stars.
thumb|left|upright|The Pirate King
The repertory system ensured that the comic patter character who performed 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 transformed into Little Buttercup in Pinafore, then into Ruth, the piratical maid-of-all-work in Pirates. Relatively unknown performers whom Gilbert and Sullivan engaged early in the collaboration would stay with the company for many years, becoming stars of the Victorian stage. These included George Grossmith, the principal comic; Rutland Barrington, the lyric baritone; Richard Temple, the bass-baritone; and Jessie Bond, the mezzo-soprano soubrette.
The piece premiered in New York rather than London, in an (unsuccessful) 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. Nevertheless, Pirates was a hit both in New York, again spawning numerous imitators, and then in London, and it became one of the most frequently performed, translated and parodied Gilbert and Sullivan works, also enjoying successful 1981 Broadway and 1982 West End revivals by Joseph Papp that continue to influence productions of the opera.
In 1880, Sullivan's cantata The Martyr of Antioch premiered at the Leeds Triennial Music Festival, with a libretto adapted by Sullivan and Gilbert from an 1822 epic poem by Henry Hart Milman concerning the 3rd-century martyrdom of St. Margaret of Antioch. Sullivan became the conductor of the Leeds festival beginning in 1880 and conducted the performance. The Carl Rosa Opera Company staged the cantata as an opera in 1898.
Savoy Theatre opens
Patience
upright|thumb|[[George Grossmith as Bunthorne in Patience, 1881]]
Patience (1881) satirised the aesthetic movement in general and its colourful poets in particular, combining aspects of A. C. Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler and others in the rival poets Bunthorne and Grosvenor. Grossmith, who created the role of Bunthorne, based his makeup, wig and costume on Swinburne and especially Whistler, as seen in the adjacent photograph. The work also lampoons male vanity and chauvinism in the military. The story concerns two rival aesthetic poets, who attract the attention of the young ladies of the village, formerly engaged to the members of a cavalry regiment. But both poets are in love with Patience, the village milkmaid, who detests one of them and feels that it is her duty to avoid the other despite her love for him. Richard D'Oyly Carte was the booking manager for Oscar Wilde, a then lesser-known proponent of aestheticism, and dispatched him on an American lecture tour in conjunction with the opera's U.S. run, so that American audiences might better understand what the satire was all about.
During the run of Patience, Carte built the large, modern Savoy Theatre, which became the partnership's permanent home. It was the first theatre (and 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.
Iolanthe
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 commented, "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 judged 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..."
left|thumb|upright|[[Alice Barnett|Barnett as The Fairy Queen]]
Iolanthe is one of several 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.
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 13 May 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
thumb|300px|Princess Ida, Act II Finale: Hildebrand and soldiers rush through the gate.
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, he dismissed her.
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." In the meantime, when Ida closed, Carte produced a revival of The Sorcerer.
Dodging the magic lozenge
The Mikado
thumb|upright|left|Poster for The Mikado
The most successful of the Savoy Operas was The Mikado (1885), which made fun of English bureaucracy, thinly disguised by 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 dramatised 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 story focuses on a "cheap tailor", Ko-Ko, who is promoted to the position of Lord High Executioner of the town of Titipu. He loves his ward, Yum-Yum, but she loves a musician, who is really the son of the emperor of Japan (the Mikado) and who is in disguise to escape the attentions of the elderly and amorous Katisha. The Mikado has decreed that executions must resume without delay in Titipu. When news arrives that the Mikado will be visiting the town, Ko-Ko assumes that he is coming to ascertain whether Ko-Ko has carried out the executions. Too timid to execute anyone, Ko-Ko cooks up a conspiracy to misdirect the Mikado, which goes awry. Eventually, Ko-Ko must persuade Katisha to marry him to save his own life and the lives of the other conspirators.
With the opening of trade between England and Japan, Japanese imports, art and styles became fashionable, and a Japanese village exhibition opened in Knightsbridge, London, making the time ripe for an opera set in Japan. Gilbert said, "I cannot give you a good reason for our... piece being laid in Japan. It... afforded scope for picturesque treatment, scenery and costume, and I think that the idea of a chief magistrate, who is... judge and actual executioner in one, and yet would not hurt a worm, may perhaps please the public."
Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert and Sullivan to satirise British politics and institutions more freely by clothing them in superficial Japanese trappings. Gilbert wrote, "The Mikado of the opera was an imaginary monarch of a remote period and cannot by any exercise of ingenuity be taken to be a slap on an existing institution." G. K. Chesterton compared it to Swift's Gulliver's Travels: "Gilbert pursued and persecuted the evils of modern England till they had literally not a leg to stand on, exactly as Swift did... I doubt if there is a single joke in the whole play that fits the Japanese. But all the jokes in the play fit the English. ... About England Pooh-bah is something more than a satire; he is the truth." Several of the later operas are similarly set in foreign or fictional locales, including The Gondoliers, Utopia, Limited and The Grand Duke.
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The Mikado became the partnership's longest-running hit, enjoying 672 performances at the Savoy Theatre, and surpassing the runs of Pinafore and Patience. It 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.
Ruddigore
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 ghostly 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 reluctance to set it. While the two men worked out their artistic differences, and Sullivan finished other obligations, Carte produced revivals of such old favourites as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado.
The Yeomen of the Guard
thumb|[[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-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 theatre 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 said:
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,
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 eventually 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 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."
The Gondoliers
thumb|upright|[[Rutland Barrington and Courtice Pounds as Giuseppe and Marco in The Gondoliers]]
The Gondoliers (1889) takes place partly in Venice and partly in a fictional 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:
In 1917 the Gramophone Company (HMV) produced the first album of a complete Gilbert and Sullivan opera, The Mikado, followed by recordings of eight more. Electrical recordings of most of the operas were then issued by HMV and Victor, beginning in the late 1920s, supervised by Rupert D'Oyly Carte. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company continued to produce well-regarded recordings until 1979, helping to keep the operas popular through the decades. Many of these recordings have been reissued on CD. After the company was revived in 1988, it recorded seven of the operas. In 1966 and again in the 1980s, BBC Radio presented complete cycles of the thirteen extant Gilbert and Sullivan operas, with dialogue. Ad hoc casts of operatic singers conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent in the 1950s and 60s and Sir Charles Mackerras in the 1990s Joseph Papp's Broadway production of The Pirates of Penzance was put on record in 1981. Since 1994, the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival has released numerous professional and amateur CDs and videos of its productions. Ohio Light Opera has recorded several of the operas in the 21st century. The Really Authentic Gilbert and Sullivan Performance Trust (RAGSPT) of Dunedin, New Zealand, recorded all 13 extant Savoy Operas between 2002 and 2012 and licensed the recordings on Creative Commons.
Cultural influence
thumb|upright|Detail from a [[Punch (magazine)|Punch cartoon, showing Sullivan and Gilbert.]]
For nearly 150 years, Gilbert and Sullivan have pervasively influenced popular culture in the English-speaking world, and lines and quotations from their operas have become part of the English language (even if not originated by Gilbert), 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, and have been quoted in legal rulings.
The American and British musical owes a tremendous debt to G&S, who were admired and copied by early musical theatre authors and composers such as Ivan Caryll, Adrian Ross, Lionel Monckton, P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton and Victor Herbert, and later Jerome Kern, Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Irving Berlin, Ivor Novello, 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.
Professor Carolyn Williams has noted: "The influence of Gilbert and Sullivan – their wit and sense of irony, the send ups of politics and contemporary culture – goes beyond musical theater to comedy in general. Allusions to their work have made their way into our own popular culture". Gilbert and Sullivan expert and enthusiast Ian Bradley agrees: