The Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas
Created | Updated Nov 15, 2004
The Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas, also known as the 'Savoy operettas', came into being as the result of a collaboration of three people: the composer Arthur Sullivan (later knighted), the writer William Schwenk Gilbert, and the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte.
The operettas were composed over a period of some 27 years, and in that time Gilbert's memorable satires of many aspects of British public life were sung in the streets to the tunes of Sullivan's eminently whistleable melodies. The names of these operettas trip off the tongue: HMS Pinafore, the Pirates of Penzance, the Mikado, Trial by Jury, and several others, are known all over the English speaking world. They are to Britain what Strauss and Lehar are to Austria, Offenbach to France, and what the entire Zarzuela tradition is to Spain.
Even as literature they have had influence, with many of Gilbert's tags passing into the common language:
- HMS Pinafore: 'I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.'
- Iolanthe: 'The House of Peers, throughout the war, did nothing in particular, and did it very well.'
- Princess Ida: 'Man is nature's sole mistake.'
- The Mikado: 'Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.'
- The Gondoliers: 'When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.'
The operettas are as follows:
- Thespis (1871): a theatre company changes places with the gods of Greek mythology.
- Trial by Jury (1875): assisted by an unctuous jury, a judge takes charge of a court case for 'breach of promise of marriage'.
- The Sorcerer (1877): the son of a baronet hires a sorcerer to cast a love-spell on the inhabitants of the local village.
- HMS Pinafore (1878): a naval captain's daughter chooses to marry a sailor rather than the first Sea Lord.
- The Pirates of Penzance (1880): a former pirate discovers that his contract with them has not expired, as he previously thought.
- Patience (1881): two rival aesthetic poets show off their talents.
- Iolanthe (1882): a fairy who marries a mortal - in this case the Lord Chancellor - must die.
- Princess Ida (1884): a prince enters a women's college in disguise in order to gain access to the beautiful princess who runs it.
- The Mikado (1885): the son of the Mikado, disguised as a musician, falls in love with a maiden betrothed to a local lord.
- Ruddigore (1887): a young man discovers he should have inherited a baronetcy, and with it a fatal curse.
- The Yeomen of the Guard (1888): a jester sells his betrothed to a prisoner condemned to die the next day, but the prisoner survives.
- The Gondoliers (1889): two Venetian boatmen discover that one of them has inherited a kingdom, but which of the two it is not quite clear.
- Utopia Ltd (1893): an island paradise is modernised to British standards.
- The Grand Duke (1896): a theatre company plots to overthrow the local ruler.
These works are widely loved, and by some almost equally reviled. It is difficult to know how much of the criticism is genuinely felt. A student musician (from another country) once said to me that he could see no merit whatever in Gilbert and Sullivan; it just was not interesting for him. At the same time he was composing atonal chamber music that was probably uninteresting for any but the most erudite musicologist.
From the musical point of view there is in fact plenty of interest. Stravinsky is said to have been very struck on overhearing a few bars of a performance of Iolanthe from his hotel bedroom window nearby, and from then on when in London he regularly went to listen to the latest operetta at the Savoy Theatre. The Yeomen of the Guard has perhaps the most beautiful score. On the other hand, Patience has the most brilliant libretto, where two Wildean poets compete against other (and a brigade of soldiers) for the admiration of a coterie of lovesick maidens.
The most universally liked of the series are HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and the Mikado. In these pieces the music is in a breezy, popular vein, and the humour of Gilbert is perhaps more universal and less specifically British than in the others. All three have been a success in other languages, notably German. But most of the other operettas are still regularly performed.
We should perhaps be grateful for a series of small-scale operatic masterworks for the English language. The music for Thespis has been lost, but is not by mere chance that the other thirteen have survived for well over a century. At the very least they have been proven to be valuable stepping stones to an easily won appreciation of good music.
